Quid Pro Quo
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Follows up "The Road to Hell". A former SVU victim reenters Elliot's life and needs his help again; but nothing can prepare him for what he's about to face.
1. Chapter 1

Quid Pro Quo

Author's Note: This story follows up my previous SVU story "The Road to Hell" and my Law and Order story "Who Killed Jack McCoy?" Hope you enjoy

Elliot could barely keep his eyes open as he drove along the dark street. A 17 hour shift at SVU finally over, and now he was looking forward to going home, and going to sleep, and putting this entire miserable day behind him. As he headed along, he noticed the surroundings didn't look familiar to him and he thought he might've turned on the wrong street, but he was so tired he could hardly even read the signs he passed. He stopped the car and got out to see if he could get his bearings straight.

It was dark…no stars, and no street lights. It didn't look like he was in the city anymore; there was a tall chain link fence on one side of the road and behind it there was what looked like a junkyard that went on forever. On the other side from the street was a piece of property that might've been a suburban block in a previous life but now there were no houses on it, just a bunch of trees.

Elliot heard a noise and he started to take out his gun. Looking around he couldn't see anything but he knew he'd heard somebody. The area looked like it was getting lighter; he looked up and saw the clouds were moving and the moon was starting to come out. Well, at least there was a little light on the subject now. He walked along the street quietly, cautiously, looking around to see who else was there. Something caught his eye and he saw it, there was somebody over where the fence ended. In the dark, it looked like a man, one about his own size at that. Elliot quietly walked up behind the other person, with his gun drawn, and when he was close enough, stuck it into the other person's back.

"Don't move," he said.

"Detective?" the other man asked.

Elliot was surprised by the voice, it was almost his own. He lowered his gun and the other man turned around, revealing to be Tony Keller, a man he'd crossed paths with several times before, and who resembled him almost perfectly.

"Tony!" he said, "What the hell are you doing out here?"

"I'm looking for my daughter, what are _you_ doing out here?" the other man asked.

"I was on my way home," Elliot started to point, and stopped, "Toni's missing?"

"I think so," Tony said.

"What do you mean you think so?" Elliot asked.

"Ehh, we were watching a movie earlier tonight…you know, one of those that somebody dies and the family comes together because of it," Tony started to explain, "About every night like clockwork, I fall asleep halfway through the movie. Toni either goes up to her room after that, or sometimes she goes out, but she always comes back. Tonight she hasn't."

"How long has she been gone?" Elliot asked.

"I don't know," Tony replied, "It's about 1 o' clock now…I'm guessing she probably went out between 9 and 10."

"Where does she usually go at night?" Elliot asked him as he put his gun away.

"Sometimes she goes to the late night theater over on 14th Street, sometimes she goes to the park," Tony said.

"Does she go to the bars?" Elliot asked.

"She's 19, Detective."

"I know that…does she go to the bars?" Elliot asked.

Tony glared at him for a second before answering, "Yeah, she does. Detective, the law says you're an adult at 18, old enough to vote, marry, and die for your country, do you have any idea how asinine it is that you can do all that and not put back a few beers?"

"Look Tony," Elliot was tired and feeling on edge, "I'm not looking to bust her but I need to know where she goes at night."

He stopped then because they both heard something that caught their attention. It sounded like somebody moaning. They looked behind them to see where it had come from. In the dimly lit night, they saw somebody moving on the pavement behind the fence.

"Toni?" Elliot called.

The person didn't answer but the moan was a woman's. Both men ran towards her and knelt down beside her. The girl tried to pick her head up and look at them. Elliot saw it _was_ Toni Keller, Tony's daughter, a former SVU victim who had left a lasting impression on Elliot.

"Toni, what happened?" Elliot asked her.

She tried to talk but couldn't. She just quietly moaned and looked down, like she was trying to point out what was wrong with her. Tony and Elliot grabbed her and carefully turned her over to see what was the matter. Neither was prepared for what they saw; Tony's T-shirt was covered in blood and so were parts of her jeans, specifically the crotch of them was drenched with it.

"Oh my God!" Elliot found himself screaming, he said to her father, "Help me get her up."

The two men, using extreme caution, lifted her up and carried her out to the street and put her in the back of Elliot's car. Tony got in the back with her and told Elliot to drive like hell to the hospital. He did, and on the way Elliot heard Tony mumbling something to his daughter, whatever it was sounded like he was trying to be reassuring. Elliot was sure whatever it was, Tony was just trying to make sure she didn't close her eyes and fall asleep.

It took Elliot a few minutes to be able to think straight again, and when he did he put on the siren and floored it to Mercy General.

* * *

Olivia hotfooted it into the room where Elliot was seated slumped down in a chair, looking dead from exhaustion.

"I got here as quick as I could," she said.

"I shouldn't have called you," Elliot shook his head.

"Well I wasn't asleep yet anyway," she said, "How's Toni?"

"I don't know," Elliot shook his head again, "I…she…" he let out an exasperated sigh, "CSU found a trail of blood on the concrete, she crawled 20 feet like that on her hands and stomach."

"What did the doctors say?" Olivia asked.

"I don't know," he said, "I don't get it, when we found her she was hardly alive…and as soon as we brought her in here, she just seemed to snap. She wouldn't let them cut her clothes off, as injured as she was she said nobody was going to take her clothes off her but her, and she wouldn't have any of the doctors or nurses look at her when she did it."

"She's probably traumatized, Elliot," Olivia said, "Are they examining her now?"

"I don't know," he said, "I heard them talk about getting a room ready for her up on the second floor, maybe they've put her there now."

"Let's go see," Olivia patted his knee, "Where's her father?"

"He went with them to keep an eye on her," Elliot said, "You should've seen the blood."

"Did she say what happened?" Olivia asked.

"No," Elliot answered, "But they got her out of here before we had much of a chance to ask her."

They headed over to the elevators and pressed the second floor. Olivia looked over at her partner who looked very close to having a nervous breakdown.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"I thought she was past this," Elliot said, "I thought now she was going to be safe."

The elevator sounded as they reached the second floor and they got off and headed to the room assigned for Toni. Olivia opened the door and they went in and saw Tony sitting in the chair next to the empty bed, also looking about dead from exhaustion and from worry.

"Is Toni here yet?" Olivia asked.

Tony looked up at them as if he had just come out of a trance. It took him a couple of tries to remember how to talk and form words.

"Yeah, she's in the shower," Tony answered.

"They finished with her already?" Elliot asked.

"They haven't gotten their hands on her," Tony answered, "She ran up here and jumped in the shower as soon as their backs were turned, she's been in there for about 15 minutes now."

Elliot and Olivia looked at each other and groaned.

"Meaning she's washed away all physical evidence that could help us catch whoever did this to her," Olivia said.

"She wouldn't let them run a rape kit," Tony told them, "She said she wasn't raped, thank God."

"What happened to her?" Olivia asked.

"I don't know, she wouldn't let them examine her."

Olivia went over to the bathroom door and knocked on it a couple of times.

"Who is it?" they heard Toni call.

"Toni, it's Detective Benson."

"Olivia?"

"Yes, can I come in?" she asked.

"Sure."

Olivia opened the door and started choking immediately as she walked into a cloud of steam. Elliot stood at the threshold and tried to see past it and could not. It felt like he was in a steam room.

"Toni, are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," came the reply from the shower.

"Well it's a little hard to breathe out here," Olivia went over to the shower and stuck her hand in through the curtain and turned the knobs, "You mind if we turn the cold water on a bit?"

The curtain moved back and Toni's face stuck out, "Hi Olivia."

"Hi, Toni, I heard you had an accident tonight," she said.

"Something like that," she answered.

Toni held the top of the shower curtain in place so it concealed her breasts but the bottom of it trailed away, showing her leg and the inside of her right thigh.

"Uhhh," Elliot took a step back, "I'm going to wait out here." And he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him.

Toni laughed, "He's in an excitable mood tonight, isn't he? Tell me something, Olivia, do I look like any of Elliot's kids?"

"Umm," Olivia looked her in the face and finally shook her head, "No, not really."

"Then how come every time he catches me naked he acts like he's walked in on one of his own daughters?" she asked.

"Probably because you're close to them in age," Olivia said.

"Men can't handle when their little girls grow up to have bodies of grown women…and Elliot for some psychotic reason seems to hold a similar parental attitude towards me, as if I was one of his girls," Toni commented, "My own father isn't so…paranoid about it."

"Toni," Olivia said, "Why won't you let the doctors examine you?"

"I didn't want them cutting my clothes off, Olivia. They do that anytime somebody's bleeding a lot, I don't have a lot of clothes, Olivia, I don't want them ruining some of the only good ones I have."

"I understand that, Toni, but why wouldn't you let them examine you afterward?"

"I didn't want them trying to give me a sponge bath," Toni said, "And I didn't want them to wait until the blood had all dried up to try and get it off then, then it'll really hurt like a bitch."

"They would've cleaned you up, Toni."

"No they wouldn't, Olivia…my mother knew a guy who got impaled on a tree, he had blood all over him and when they took him to the hospital, they never bothered cleaning him off, they let his family come in and see him like that. They aren't going to do that to me," Toni replied.

"Can you tell me why you wouldn't let them run a rape kit?" Olivia asked.

"Because I wasn't raped," Toni said.

* * *

"She says she wasn't raped, I believe her," Tony told Elliot as they waited in her room, "You know Toni, you know she never hides anything. She came to you when Tobias tried to kill her, didn't she? She brought you his blood to test."

"Then why isn't she cooperating now?" Elliot asked the girl's father.

"Elliot, I don't know what happened to her tonight but whatever it was must have been a traumatic event for her."

"And since she's always so forthcoming," Elliot responded, "It only makes sense she would want to cooperate with the doctors, and with us, so we can find whoever beat the hell out of her. If nothing else, why didn't she let them run the rape kit?"

"Because she wasn't raped, it's not that hard to figure out," Tony said.

"We run rape kits all the time that come back negative, there wouldn't have been any problem in letting them do it just to make sure," Elliot told him.

"Detective," Tony said in a tone that was no longer person to person, but condescendingly now, as if he were speaking to a simpleton, as if Elliot couldn't understand what he was saying, "Put yourself in her place. How would you like a bunch of cold, impersonal titmice in scrubs sticking things up your privates?"

"They just use cotton swabs, it wouldn't hurt her," Elliot said.

"You can't speak from experience," Tony replied, "Besides, maybe it's not that, did you ever think that having them sticking things up into her would only remind her of what all those people did to her for all those years? They lift up your paper gown, make sure you can't get away and go to it. Having the test done would be like reliving a rape all over again, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know," Elliot said, "I didn't think of that."

"Look, I'm a reasonable person, at least I try to be," Tony said, "And that's not easy considering all the crap _I've_ gone through. I know you guys have your job to do, but you're the sex crimes police, and if Toni said she wasn't raped, she wasn't raped, and if she wasn't raped, then there's no sex crime."

"That's not all we arrest people for, Tony you know that," Elliot told him, "Now somebody beat the hell out of your daughter tonight and could've killed her. Don't you want us to find out who did it?"

"Hell yes I do, I want to find the guy and kill him myself."

* * *

"I don't get it," Olivia said as she had Toni turn around to look at her, "Your clothes were _covered_ in blood."

"I washed most of it off," Toni told her, "I've managed to clean out most of the wounds. And also…there's to consider the fact that my nose was about broken tonight and it was bleeding a hell of a lot. That's probably what caused most of it on my shirt."

"Toni, what _did_ happen tonight?" Olivia asked.

"Nothing," she answered, "I got into a fight."

"With who?"

"I don't know, it was dark," Toni said.

"You wouldn't be covering for someone, would you?" Olivia asked her.

"Now why would I do something stupid like that?"

Good point.

* * *

Both men jumped up when the bathroom door opened and Toni stepped out wrapped in a large towel and Olivia came out behind her.

"Toni, are you okay?" her father asked.

"I'm going to go get a doctor so we can find out," Olivia told them, "Keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't disappear again."

"Toni, why don't you sit down until Liv comes back with the doctor?" Elliot asked her.

"Sit down where?" she asked, "You're sitting on my bed, Dad's sitting in the chair, the only place left for me to sit is the floor."

Tony wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her onto his lap.

"Toni, are you feeling alright?" Elliot asked.

"Oh yes, I'm just _very_ tired…I'd love to just go to bed right now," she said.

"You know what…as soon as the doctor looks you over, you can do that," Elliot said, "In the meantime can you tell us what happened tonight?"

Toni hung her head low, closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Toni," Elliot tried to get her attention.

"Hey detective," Tony said to him, "She's been through a rough night, maybe if you came by in the morning after she's had a chance to rest, maybe she can tell you then what happened."

"It's important that we get as much information as possible early on," Elliot said.

"I know but do you think she's in any position to tell us anything?" Tony asked, "Let her sleep it off."

"I guess we don't have much choice," Elliot said.

Olivia came back with a male doctor who looked to be somewhere in his 30s. When Toni heard them come back, she opened her eyes slightly and looked at the two of them.

"Alright, Miss Keller," he said as he went over to her, "If you'll just come with me."

Toni shot up and about hit the ceiling. She started screaming at the doctor and hitting him, saying that she wasn't going anywhere with him. Elliot and Tony grabbed her and pinned her arms at her sides so she couldn't do anymore damage. Tony's chest heaved high up and down as he caught his breath and tried to get his daughter to calm down. Elliot and Olivia looked at each other, and without saying a word it was obvious that both were trying to figure out what the hell they were going to do now.

* * *

"They managed to sedate her," Tony said an hour later when they returned to the room, "She'll probably be out until morning."

"Mr. Keller," Olivia started to say.

"What's with all this formality?" Tony asked, "Eight years I was in Rikers my name was Keller, before that, everybody called me Tony, of course my personal favorite was the first 12 years of my life when my mother just called me 'hey you!', why don't you just call me Tony?"

Olivia felt an awkward smile form on her face and she said, "Okay, Tony."

She went over to Toni's bed and looked at her. She pulled the sheet back and saw Toni wasn't wearing anything.

"What happened here?" she asked.

"Well I haven't been able to get home and get her a change of clothes, and she won't wear the paper gown they gave her," Tony said.

"Still," Elliot said, "That's a bit inappropriate her sleeping naked."

"Well she wouldn't be, but they took her underwear," Tony told them.

"We took her clothes to have the blood tested to see if any of it belongs to the other person," Olivia explained.

"Have the doctors told you anything yet?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah, no major damage, thank God…she came very close to getting her nose broken though, she's got some bruises and welts and she's going to be sore for a while, but that's about it," Tony answered.

Olivia pulled the sheet back further and saw Toni had one of the bathroom towels pressed between her legs.

"What happened?" she asked.

"She was still bleeding some and…with no clothes, she had to make due with this until further notice," Tony said, "Listen, I know we've already put you two out a lot, but if you could stay here with her until I get back, I could make a run to the house and get her things."

"Sure, go ahead," Elliot told him.

"Appreciate it," Tony said as he slipped out the door.

Olivia waited until they were sure Tony was gone, and had Elliot come over towards the bed.

"She's a real mess, Elliot," she said, looking at all the bruises forming on her body.

"Somebody did a real number on her, I just can't figure out why she won't tell us who," Elliot said.

"Maybe she honestly doesn't know," Olivia thought.

"Still, she could describe the guy for us," Elliot said.

"If she saw him," Olivia told him, "Maybe they put something over her head so she couldn't see."

"Still, whatever happened, she could tell us so we have an idea what we're dealing with," Elliot said.

"Maybe there's a reason she isn't," she said "If she won't tell us and she won't tell her father, maybe we need to bring in someone else."

"Okay…who?" Elliot asked.

"Huang, she talked to him before, she probably would again," Olivia suggested.

Elliot sighed and shrugged his shoulders, "I guess it's worth a try."

* * *

Tony returned to the hospital within half an hour with an overnight bag that he started to unpack as Olivia and Elliot went into details of what they found out.

"We're still waiting to hear a verdict about the blood on her clothes," Olivia told Tony, "The doctor says some marks indicate she fought back so we're hoping she got a piece of this guy on her clothes so we can find him."

Tony glanced over at the bed and saw Toni had turned on her side. He took a Kleenex out of the bag, folded it and placed it under her mouth which was slightly open so she could breathe.

"So, do you think she knew this guy?" he asked.

"It's certainly possible," Olivia said, "It could be that when she went out tonight, she was going to meet him."

"We're going to have to wait for her to wake up to tell us that," Elliot said.

"In the meantime, there's a _lot_ she's not telling us and we thought maybe we should call in somebody else to talk to her."

"Who?" Tony asked.

"A psychiatrist," Elliot answered.

Tony scrunched up his face, "You mean a head shrinkuh?"

"She talked to one before," Elliot said, "Dr. George Huang who works for the FBI. Unfortunately he's not available right now so we're going to call in Dr. Emil Skoda tomorrow, he has a pretty good track record too with people. In the meantime, it's very late, and we're all exhausted, I think what needs to be done now is for us to go home and get some sleep and get back on this after we've been able to rest."

"I'm going to stay here," Tony said, "If she wakes up and I'm not here, she's going to panic again."

"Okay," Olivia replied, "We'll be back in a few hours, hopefully by then, Toni will be awake and she can tell us what happened."

* * *

Tony was just about to fall asleep when he heard someone rapping at the door.

"Who is it?" he asked as he rubbed his eye.

The door opened and Olivia came in, "It's me, Tony."

He turned and looked at her and said, "Ain't you got a home to go to?"

"I didn't think you'd be sleeping and I thought you could use some company," she said as she closed the door behind her, "How's Toni doing?"

"She's had a couple of nosebleeds, and she's having some trouble with her left arm," Tony told her.

"How can you tell?" Olivia asked as she went over to the bed.

"She tried rolling on that side and couldn't, she had to turn on the right," he explained.

Olivia looked at the girl and through all the bruises and cuts, she was able to see what the girl's father saw.

"She's very beautiful," Olivia noted, "You had her pretty young, didn't you?"

"If you consider 18 young," he answered, "18 and scared as _hell_ when Marissa told me. You always hear about people who have kids when they're too young, when they're not financially stable, when they're too reckless. I don't think we ever had any idea what we were doing, but it seemed to work. I figured no matter how much we could screw up, she still had to be better off than we were as kids," Tony said.

"Why's that?"

"I didn't have a father, and I don't know if my mother resented me for that or what, but about every day she'd get this big, heavy, metal spatula that she'd hit me in the head with all the time. When I met Marissa, she said it couldn't compare to her mother, who would beat her knuckles with a metal meat hammer. You'd think we were raised Catholic or something."

Olivia laughed a bit and asked him, "What was Toni like when she was little?"

"Oh she was a good girl…never cried. Do you know," he looked up at her, "Do you know some people think that's proof that a person is a psychopath? Never crying, unable to produce tears…well it's not true," Tony said, "There's nothing wrong with Toni, and there never was."

* * *

Olivia was only half asleep, had been for a while. She looked at her watch and saw it was about 5:30 in the morning. She went over to the window and saw everything outside still looked pitch black.

"Olivia?"

She turned and saw Toni trying to sit up in the bed. Olivia pushed her bangs back as she went over to her, "How're you feeling, Toni?"

"I need to get another shower," Toni answered.

"Well your dad brought some of your clothes from home," Olivia told her.

"Great…Olivia, can you see if they have any pads around here?" Toni asked as she got up.

"Sure."

"Great," Toni said as she wrapped the bed sheet around herself and made a dash to the bathroom.

Olivia waited until she heard the water come on and she took out her cell phone and dialed Elliot's number. It rang, and it rang again.

"Elliot," she said when he finally answered, "I know it's early but Toni's awake and she seems lucid."

There was silence on the other end for a moment before she heard Elliot respond, "I'll be right down."

* * *

"What time is Skoda supposed to get here?" Olivia asked Elliot as they waited for Toni to emerge from the bathroom.

"Well he didn't appreciate the call last night at 2:30 but he said he'd try and be in early today. Though he suggested we move Toni down to the police station so he can talk to her there," Elliot answered.

"How come?" Olivia asked.

"Because, when I told him what she'd done, he said the sooner she gets out of this surrounding, probably the better," he answered.

"I could've told you that," Tony commented.

A couple minutes later the bathroom door opened and Toni stepped out dressed in a white T-shirt and blue jeans and her white sneakers. Nobody could help but notice that she was walking stiffly and appeared to have trouble moving her arms as well.

"Toni, are you okay?" Elliot asked.

"I'm sore," she replied, "My teeth hurt, every time I blow my nose the pain sears through the gums to my teeth."

"And every time she blows her nose she gets another nosebleed," Tony added as he helped his daughter over to the bed, "Just take it easy, talk to the detectives and tell them what you know."

Toni laid back against the mattress and the pillows and looked up at the ceiling. Trying, Elliot noticed, not to look at them as she recalled the previous night's events.

"I went out after the movie," she said, "About 9:30."

"Where did you go?" Elliot asked.

"There's a bar on Second Avenue where they're not too particular about ID," she said.

"Were you drinking?" Olivia asked.

"I had a beer and a half," she said, "Mainly I just sat around watching all the other idiots. I was there until about 11:30."

"And when you left, where'd you go?" Elliot asked.

"I don't know…I didn't want to go home yet, so I just walked around."

"Toni, that scrap yard your dad and I found you at, was that where it happened?" Elliot asked.

"I was walking by that place, and I was jumped," she said.

"What did he look like?"

"It wasn't one guy," she said.

"Two?" Olivia asked.

Toni shook her head.

"Three?" Elliot inquired.

"No, it was a whole pack of them," she said.

"What did they look like?" Elliot asked.

"They were all men…and they were all white…_really_ white."

Elliot was confused, "You mean like albino?"

"No," she shook her head, "They were just _white_."

"What did they do?" Tony asked before the detectives could.

"A couple of them grabbed me and the others were hitting me," she said, "And they threw me to the ground and started kicking me. They tried to break my arms."

Elliot and Tony both tensed when they heard that.

"What do you mean?" Elliot asked.

"One of them got on top of me, and we were scrambling on the ground, he was trying to pin me down, I was trying to throw him off. And he locked his leg over my shoulder and his foot around my neck as he grabbed my arm and he started twisting it…tried to twist the whole damn thing around."

Olivia looked and saw something change in Tony's eyes as he watched his daughter and listened to her recount.

"That's why you were having trouble with it last night?" Olivia asked.

"Yeah, I threw him off, but they had me pinned flat and another guy stuck his foot..." she looked over at them and had Elliot come over to the bed. He did and Toni raised her foot and stuck it between his neck and his shoulder, "He stood on me like this and tried to break the other arm, I moved and he lost his balance and fell beside me."

"Then what happened?" Elliot asked.

"Two of them grabbed me up and took me over to the junkyard, and they threw me down and started to _really_ beat the shit out of me. One of them punched me in the nose and I felt the pain go all the way up to my forehead."

"When did it finally end?" Olivia asked.

"About 20 minutes before my dad and Elliot showed up," Toni said, "I was too sore to move, so I laid there for a while, waiting for the pain to stop. It didn't, so I pulled myself up on my stomach, I couldn't walk…so I pulled myself along the ground. That's when I heard them."

"Do you know _why_ they left when they did?" Olivia asked.

"They weren't done…otherwise I would've been dead," Toni explained, "But they all ran off into the dark, and I didn't see them again after that."

"Had you ever seen any of them before?" Elliot asked.

"No," she tried to laugh, "I'd remember seeing them."

"What did they look like? Tall, short, fat, thin, what?" Elliot asked.

"Most of them were tall, like you, or more…they were all in their 20s and 30s, none of them near my age," Toni said, "And they were all wearing black."

* * *

"I feel bad for this girl, but I'm not sure I'm seeing how she qualifies as a special victim," Cragen told Elliot and Olivia when they brought the Kellers in that morning.

"I think that's the point," Olivia said, "It sounds like they're all a gang…"

"Yeah, and gangs have initiation rituals where they stomp the crap out of the new member," Elliot said.

"But the way she described what happened," Olivia said, "Clobbering her, kicking her, trying to break her arms, that's what they usually do to men, women they usually rape, it sounds like that wasn't even on their minds."

"Okay, Skoda's coming down to see if he can get anything else out of her, where is she?" Cragen asked.

"Your office," Olivia answered.

Cragen did a double take, "_My_ office?"

"Captain she's already been put through the wringer, arrested, thrown in jail, hauled off in handcuffs, I don't think we want to risk her relapsing in an interrogation room," Elliot said.

"Alright, I guess we don't have much of a choice, when's Skoda due in anyway?"

"I'm right here," Emil answered as he came up to the detectives, "So what's going on?"

"We've got Toni in the captain's office, will you talk to her?" Olivia asked.

"Is she alone?" Skoda asked.

"We know the rules, we told her father he can't go in while you're there," Elliot said, "He's probably off comparing his face to the 'Wanted' sketch composites."

"I'll see what I can do," Skoda told them.

He disappeared around the corner and Cragen and the detectives waited. A minute later they heard Toni screaming and they heard something crashing. They ran to Cragen's office and found Skoda pressed up by the door with a large cut over his eye and Toni was at Cragen's desk, picking up things to throw at him. Elliot ran over to Toni, grabbed her from behind and actually lifted her off of the ground, trying to get her to calm down.

"Are you alright?" Olivia asked Skoda, "What happened?"

"He did it!" Toni screamed, "He did it, he did it! He's one of the bastards that attacked me!"


	2. Chapter 2

"Are you sure you don't need to see a doctor?" Olivia asked Skoda once things had calmed down and Toni had been removed.

"No, it's fine," he insisted as he staunched the blood with a handkerchief.

Cragen picked up the hunk of plastic and metal that had hit the psychiatrist in the head. "She ripped the damn phone out of the wall and threw it at him," he said.

"She thought I was one of the men who attacked her, did she say what they look liked?" Skoda asked Olivia.

"Tall…20's to 30's, dressed in black…white, that's about it," she said.

"And bald?" Skoda asked.

"She didn't say."

"Where is she now?" Cragen asked.

Elliot stepped back into the office, "I had her father take her off to one of the interrogation rooms, she's calming down now. What the hell happened?"

"Something has her convinced I'm one of her assailants," Skoda told them.

"You know," Olivia said, remembering something, "Tony got a strange look in his eyes when Toni was describing how they tried to break her arms."

"From what you've given me so far, a pack of white guys, bald, brutalizing her, it sounds like a gang…maybe a white supremacists."

"Oh great, now we're going at it with Nazis again," Elliot said.

"Elliot," Skoda said, "White supremacy gangs run rampant in maximum security lockup. Her father spent eight years in Rikers for killing three people, odds are in that time he found out a good deal of who was in which gangs."

"You think the people that did this to her were members he knew in Rikers?" Olivia asked.

"Tony seems to think so," Skoda said, "You might talk to him and see if he has any information to offer."

"Okay…so we gotta talk to Tony," Elliot said, "How are we going to do that without his daughter being there?"

* * *

Elliot opened the door to the interrogation room where both Kellers were seated at the table.

"Toni, will you get up please?" he asked.

Toni straightened up and pulled out a Kleenex as she started going 'ah—ah' and covered her nose just as she sneezed. She blew her nose and tiny drops of blood stained the top of her T-shirt.

"Not again," she groaned.

"Take it easy," Elliot told her as Munch came in, "Munch is going to take you to the bathroom to wash up."

Elliot noticed the stiff and awkward way she moved her legs as she walked out of the room. He wanted to find the bastards responsible for this and beat the crap out of them.

"What's going on?" Tony asked as he got up.

"Sit down, Tony," Elliot said, "At the hospital, Toni said the men who attacked her tried to break her arms. Olivia noticed at the time that she said that, you got a weird look on your face, is there something you might know?"

"I don't think so," Tony replied.

"Well she tried to bash Skoda's head in with the telephone because she thought he was one of the men who jumped her. Skoda thinks it might be some white supremacy gang. You knew people like that in Rikers, didn't you?"

"All of prison _is_ gangs, Detective, white supremacists against the blacks, the Mexicans, the Asians, the Jews."

"But you're white too, did any of them have a reason to come after you?" Elliot asked.

"The general rule is if you want to survive in prison, you join a gang, I didn't, I wasn't going to take orders from anybody," Tony explained, "That didn't go over so well with the others."

"Did you ever see them try what happened to your daughter?" Elliot asked.

"I saw a lot worse than that, but yes, if they didn't want to kill somebody they'd just break their arms and legs and let them knit in the infirmary for a couple of months," Tony said, "Leave them helpless, unable to move, unable to fight back, it's a power move."

"And the skinheads did this too?"

"Of course they did, them especially because they had the most enemies." Tony's eyes bugged out, "Now wait a minute, Detective. They were all doing life sentences for multiple murders, they couldn't have gotten out."

"No, but those gangs are not limited to the confines of prison, you know that, they have other members, and whole other gangs on the outside running things," Elliot said, "It sounds like that's what's going on now."

The door opened and Munch came in, "Elliot, did you guys get pictures of Toni's injuries?"

"Yeah, we took them last night at the hospital, why?" Elliot asked.

"She took her shirt off to get the blood out and a lot of those bruises look a lot worse today," Munch told him, "The way they look now could be _very_ convincing to a jury."

"You know what I think?" Elliot asked, "I think we need to have Toni talk to a sketch artist about what these guys _really_ looked like."

"Today?" Tony asked.

"No, today we're going to have to figure out someway to get her to talk to Skoda," Elliot told him.

"Either that or see if Huang's back in town," Munch suggested.

"Uh, Elliot," Tony said to him, "Is that headshrinkuh of yours going to have to talk to me too?"

"I don't know, why?" Elliot asked.

"I talked to enough of those nuts when I was getting out of prison, I've had enough of their psychobabble to last me the rest of my life."

"That's certainly understandable," Munch said, "Most of these so called professionals, are just pill pushers hiding behind their degrees. A person acts a little different, suddenly they've got a disorder: an eating disorder, a personality disorder, a gender disorder, an anxiety disorder, a panic disorder, a stress disorder. They see somebody who's not like all the rest and suddenly there's something severely wrong with them. I've seen you in action, Mr. Keller, you're not what they categorize as being a 'normal' person. Nor is your daughter, especially not your daughter."

"Here we go again," Elliot groaned as he stuck a finger in one ear and tried to drown out Munch's ramblings.

"I've been working in Special Victims for a while now, Mr. Keller," Munch told him, "I've seen just about every type of victim there is, but when we met your daughter, that was a new experience altogether."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tony asked.

"Your daughter's been put through a lifetime of hell. Normally, most of the victims we encounter couldn't cope with _half_ the abuse she's endured. A lot of them kill themselves, or they snap and go crazy because they can't deal with what happened. Most of them let their rape dominate over their life so they live it in complete fear and paranoia: double checking the doors and windows to make sure they're locked, sleeping with the lights on, carrying a concealed gun at all times, going to sleep in running shoes so they can get away, changing their appearances so dramatically in hopes of never looking appealing to anyone. Toni doesn't do any of that. A lot of the victims we see, they can't stand to recollect the details of what happened, it's as bad for them as reliving the rape all over again. Last time your daughter was here, she gave what was to the best of her memory, a full recount of everything that had been done to her, without flinching. When we have our victims come in to look at a lineup, they become afraid, they start shivering and crying and a lot of them can't go through with it…I have a good idea if we got a bunch of big bald white men together and brought her in, she'd walk right up to the window and point out the bastard for us."

"Hey Munch, did Toni tell you anything that she didn't tell us?" Elliot asked, hoping they'd be able to get more details for the case than they already had.

"Yeah she did," Munch answered as he headed for the door. He stopped, turned back to the men and said, "She remembered that they all had a bunch of white pride tattoos on their bodies, and that last night when they were stomping the crap out of her, they forced her legs apart and kicked her in the genitals repeatedly."

And just like that, Munch was out the door again. The remaining two men sat at the table with stone faces for a few seconds, then Tony pushed his chair back, got up and headed over to the door with his hands curling into a strangling position. Elliot reached out as Tony passed him and grabbed him by the back of the waistband on his jeans and pulled him back.

"Don't do it, Tony," he warned him.

Tony turned around and looked at him, "I want to kill these bastards, Detective."

"So do I," Elliot said, "I saw what they did to your daughter, I want to feed my gun to them personally, but _now_ is not the time for that. We need to find out who these people are and we need to find out _where_ they are, and the only way that's going to happen is if nobody goes ballistic now."

"Well that's very easy for _you_ to say, Detective, because it's not _your_ kid they did this to, now you're a cop," Tony reminded him, "What are you going to do when it's your daughter lying half dead in the hospital bleeding out of all ends?"

* * *

Elliot listened to Tony grind his teeth as he mumbled to himself on the way back.

"Calm down, Keller," he warned him.

"I'm calm," Tony replied, before continue the mutter that had about become a chant for him, "I'm gonna kill them, I'm gonna kill them, _I'm going to kill them_, I'm going to…" they reentered the main room of the station where Toni waited with Olivia, and Tony's murderous rage was gone as he went over to his daughter and said, "Hey baby, how're you feeling?"

"Can we get out of here now?" she asked.

"Toni," Elliot said, "We'd like you to try talking to Skoda again."

"The skinhead?" she asked.

"He is _not_. He's a psychiatrist."

"That's even worse," she replied.

"Toni."

"Elliot! I brained that guy with a phone, you don't think he's going to retaliate?" she asked him.

"No," he answered firmly, "I don't."

"If he doesn't, then that fool _really_ is crazy," she returned, "I don't want to talk to him."

"I think I should take her home," Tony said.

"Might be a good idea," Olivia said as she rubbed at her eye, "Let her rest for a while."

"Looks like she's not the only one who needs it," Elliot said.

Olivia opened her eyes and looked at Elliot, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You were at the hospital all night, maybe you need to come back later too," Elliot said, "You're not looking too well."

"Oh really?" Toni said to him, "When was the last time _you_ looked in the mirror, barrel butt?"

"Okay, that's enough," Cragen said, getting in between all of them, "Mr. Keller, take your daughter home, we'll keep in touch."

"I bet you will, baldy," Tony responded, "We'll see you guys later."

Once they were gone, Olivia let out the thought she'd been holding onto, "That girl's already been put through hell."

"What's the word about the blood?" Cragen asked.

"Bad news," Munch answered as he walked up to Cragen, "Only Toni's blood was on her clothes."

"How the hell did she fight them and not get a piece of them?" Olivia asked.

"Well from her own recollection it doesn't sound like she did much fighting. There were six or eight of them, one of her, two of them are holding her down and picking her up while the rest of them are beating the crap out of her," Elliot said, "And stomping on her…kicking her in the crotch again and again, and again…"

"Elliot," Cragen said, "Maybe you want to consider talking to Skoda too."

"Maybe," Elliot agreed, though not for the same reason, "We couldn't get Toni to talk to him, maybe we have enough information for him to go on at the time."

* * *

"Well, I _can_ tell you that the attack _was_ personal," Skoda told the detectives, "As Olivia said, men in gangs generally rape women when they attack them, they beat the hell out of the men."

"There's no way it could've been a random attack?" Elliot asked.

"_Very_ unlikely," Skoda told him, "From the statement she gave it sounds like rape wasn't even an issue with them."

"She says she wasn't raped, the doctors confirm it," Elliot said, "But it would be a lot more convincing if she hadn't gone ballistic on the doctors when they tried to examine her."

"Maybe it's just the men she has a problem with," Munch suggested.

They turned to him, "What?"

"I'm saying maybe her reaction was drawn on because the doctors examining her were men," Munch said, "Who knows? After everything she's gone through, maybe she doesn't like men, maybe she likes women."

"Munch!" Olivia said, disgusted.

"Oh sure, the old white guy suggests it, and he's a pervert," Munch said, "Come on, Elliot, she's not going out to meet any guys when she disappears into the night, maybe she plays for the other team."

"That's disgusting," Elliot told him.

"And it doesn't make sense," Olivia added, "When Toni threw that fit about taking her clothes off, she had one male doctor, and two female nurses trying to look at her. The orderlies on the second floor on the night shift who give the patients sponge baths are women, Toni knew that and she still jumped into the shower as fast as she could. She didn't want _anybody_ looking at her."

"She let _you_ look at her without any clothes on," Munch pointed out.

"And she would've done the same thing if Elliot hadn't backed out of the room, it didn't make a difference to her," Olivia said.

"That could be because she knows the both of you," Skoda told them, "In her eyes, you're not authority, ergo, not the enemy. The staff at the hospital were all strangers to her, routine, cold and impersonal is how most patients describe them, it would make anybody short of an exhibitionist uneasy about undressing in front of them or even being examined by them."

"There's something else," Olivia said, "I didn't want to bring this up in front of Keller because we all know the temper he has. When Toni stepped out of the shower last night, she had shaved off all her body hair, on her arms, under them, on her legs, and in her privates. That sounds like something a rape victim would do, those who experience a neurotic need to cleanse themselves, because the rape left them feeling dirty."

"Got any ideas about that one, Doc?" Elliot asked.

"It could be something she routinely does already," Skoda said, "You said she was naked in the bed because she wouldn't wear the hospital gown. Odds are her father would've seen it at some point, and if it _was_ something new, being her father, naturally he would've reacted."

"Ugh," Olivia made a face, "I can't even imagine being almost 20 years old and having to explain my personal hygiene to my _mother_."

"Guy's been in prison for eight years," Elliot reminded her, "There is no privacy there. Everyone watches everyone doing everything."

"But Toni hasn't," Olivia said, "Can you imagine how awkward this whole thing must be for his daughter? If it were me, I would've died of embarrassment long before now."

"So would any one of my kids," Elliot added.

"We're getting off base here," Olivia said, "What about the guys who did this to her?"

Skoda looked to Elliot and said, "You asked him about the gangs in Rikers."

"He said that he had trouble with everybody, including the white pride nuts. He also said that they did just what those guys did to Toni last night," Elliot said.

"Great," Munch grumbled, "Going against the white supremacists again, I regret I have but one ass to put on the line against those Nazi nuts."

"Okay," Olivia said, trying to figure everything out, "So, we're looking for a gang of Neo-Nazis that are somehow connected to someone from one of Rikers' no-parole skinhead gangs, who is somehow connected to Tony Keller. How are we going to find out who they are?"

"CSU examined every inch of the scrap yard where Toni was, aside from her blood they couldn't find anything definite," Elliot said, "No prints, and whatever hairs and fibers they got were too partial to get any hits."

"So they're either smart or just damn lucky," Olivia commented.

"Not too smart, Toni saw what they looked like," Elliot reminded her.

"Yeah, and she couldn't tell one of them from a psychiatrist. I don't know what we're going to do."

* * *

The front door opened and Tony Keller greeted the two detectives and the psychiatrist with a suspicious look. He clearly wasn't used to getting unwanted company first thing in the morning. "What's going on?"

"We're trying for round two," Elliot said, "Is your daughter in?"

"Yeah," Tony held the door open for them.

"Where is she?" Olivia asked.

"Upstairs in her room," he answered, "What's going on?"

"Skoda's going to try and talk to her again," Elliot said.

Tony saw Skoda for what must've been the first time because he looked surprised. "You're the headshrinkuh?"

"Yes, Mr. Keller."

"Sheesh," Tony said, "No wonder she tried to kill you, you look like a guy I did time with in Rikers."

Skoda seemed to disregard that statement and he pointed to the staircase, "Which room is it?"

"You won't be able to miss it," Tony said.

As Skoda headed up the stairs, Tony asked Olivia and Elliot, "And why did you two come?"

"Oh we heard you'd moved again," Olivia said as she looked around, "Looks very nice, better than the last place."

"Well, that whole block was ready for the wrecker's ball," Tony said, "Besides, neither one of us can get too comfortable in a bedroom on the ground floor. We're funny like that."

They heard Toni yelling from upstairs and Elliot and Olivia rushed up the stairs to see what was the matter now. They reached the center hall and heard Toni yelling, "Get out-get out-get out!" as Skoda backed through the door. The last 'get out' followed by something she threw at him. Skoda closed the door just in time for the flying object to hit it instead of him.

"What was that about?" Elliot asked.

Skoda turned to them and said, "Well she's improving, first she tried to kill me because she _thought_ I was a white supremacist, now she's trying to kill me because she _knows_ I'm a psychiatrist."

Elliot took out his cell phone and dialed Cragen. "She's not going to talk to Skoda, Cap…tell Huang we need him, she'll talk to him."

Olivia went over to the door and listened. It was quiet inside.

"Toni?"

"Olivia?"

"I'm coming in," she said.

Olivia opened the door and saw lying on the floor near her feet, a ceramic candy dish that had a large piece chipped out of the middle, from when it hit the door. Olivia looked up and saw Toni standing at the other end of the room.

"What was that about?" she asked.

"I don't want to talk to him, Olivia," Toni answered.

"Why not?" Olivia wanted to know, "You _know_ he didn't attack you."

"That's not the point," Toni told her, "I don't like him, I don't like the looks of him, he has that stuffy, arrogant air about him all shrinks have and I think he's a pervert."

The last part was clearly for a laugh but Olivia wasn't too amused. Before she could say anything, Toni ran past her and out of the room to where the two men were.

"Elliot," she said, "I want to talk to you about one of the guys who attacked me."

"Okay."

Toni reached out and grabbed the back of Skoda's coat and tugged on it. He turned his head to see what she wanted and she said to him, "Can you take this thing off?"

Elliot was curious but didn't say anything. Skoda returned an equally confused look but he took his coat off.

"Now stick out your arm," Toni told him.

Skoda did. Toni grabbed the neck of his sweater and pulled it down to his shoulder. She didn't seem to find what she was looking for, so she let that go and instead rolled up the sleeve.

"A little flabby," she noted, "One of the guys who was doing the cha-cha on me with his fists was built pretty much like this guy but his arms were bigger, like a couple of constrictors."

* * *

"We had Toni speak with a sketch artist and they came up with eight composite sketches," Elliot told Cragen, "Eight guys, all alike, all white, all young, all with shaved heads, and swastika tattoos, and they're all big. It's a wonder they _didn't_ kill her."

"Well that won't make them too easy to pick out from the other white supremacists in the area," Munch said, "As it turns out, there's a bar on Third Avenue that a lot of bikers and gangs frequent nightly, including a bunch of Hitler youth."

"Third Avenue?" Elliot repeated, "Tony left the bar on Second when she was attacked."

"So we might have a connection yet," Cragen said.

"Of course there's a problem, if we go over there to check it out, who's going to go in?" Munch asked, "I'd stick out like a sore thumb, sending Fin in would just be asking for trouble, I highly doubt they'd be willing to talk to Olivia about anything we're interested in hearing, and if they did this job to get back at Tony Keller, they'll think Elliot's him."

"Maybe Skoda can pass for a Nazi," Elliot thought.

"Are you serious?" Cragen asked him.

"Well, he had Toni convinced and he didn't even have to do anything."

"How's she doing anyway?" Munch asked.

"Pretty much her same old self," Elliot answered, "Acting like nothing happened."

"Huang's not going to be able to get here for a couple of days," Cragen told them, "I've suggested to Skoda he stay on the case until then and he agreed."

"She's not going to talk to him," Elliot reminded him.

"I know," Cragen replied, "You are."

* * *

"I don't believe this," Elliot said as he paced through the room.

"I've worked with Jack McCoy for 10 years," Skoda told him, "I'm used to diagnosing people I never even see, let alone don't talk to. So run by me what you know about her past."

"Here we go again," Elliot muttered.

"Toni's mother died when she was three and her father took sole care of her. When she was nine, he left her with a man who after Tony left, locked her in the closet with other girls and rented their bodies out every night to whoever could pay. Elliot found them a couple months later, and she got sent to a foster home."

"Where she wasn't treated much better," Elliot added, "That ugly cycle continues for three years, and then she quits going to foster homes period. She starts wandering around the city all day every day, looking for somebody to go home with."

"Why?" Skoda asked.

"She never got accustomed to sleeping in the street with the garbage," Elliot said, "She preferred a roof over her head."

"So she was raped for three years, and then?"

"She slept with anybody who would take her home for the night," Olivia said, "Mostly it was other teenagers about as messed up as she was."

"Survival's the instinct the Kellers know best," Elliot commented.

"What?" Olivia and Skoda asked.

Elliot stopped in his tracks and turned around to them as if he just realized what he'd said. "She didn't do it because she'd gotten used to it, she did it so she'd have a place to sleep at night, something to eat, a place to shower, she did it to stay alive, that's what they do best."

"Didn't you say Keller made a lot of enemies in prison because he wouldn't join with any of the gangs?" Skoda asked.

"Yeah, so what?" Elliot asked.

"That defies the logic that their first instinct is survival, for the father anyway..."

"Well he managed to stay alive somehow," Olivia said.

"Thing of it is, Liv, as we well know, guys in prison don't always _belong_ in a gang, sometimes they're _property_ of the gang," Elliot told her.

"A girlfriend," Olivia said.

"Yeah."

"But do you really think Keller would do that either?" Skoda asked.

"I don't," Olivia answered, "I think he'd kill any guy who tried to put their hands on him."

"What about you, Elliot?"

"I don't know," Elliot replied as he finally sat down, "I spent eight years hoping I would get to see him die, for something that wasn't even his fault. I never thought I'd be able to get within ten feet of this guy without wanting to kill him myself."

"I guess these last few years have _really_ been confusing for you," Olivia said.

"I guess so," Elliot replied, "Never thought I'd ever be this closely involved with the guy."

"Well you _are_ involved with his daughter," Olivia reminded him.

"Yes, what about that?" Skoda asked, "She came back after eight years to find Elliot for something."

"Keller's cellmate Tobias Wentworth got out of prison and attacked Toni. Cut up her face," Olivia explained.

"She had some surgery done to correct that," Elliot noted.

"She got his DNA and brought it to SVU for us to analyze to match it to Wentworth, she asked for Elliot specifically because she remembered him," Olivia said.

"As I understand, when she was initially asked about the abuse, she wouldn't speak to the officers or the doctors," Skoda said.

"She finally told Huang about what happened," Olivia said, "In as much detail as she was willing to give."

"And during that time, how did she fare, emotionally?" Skoda asked.

Olivia tried to think of how to describe it, "She was quiet about it, she kept saying 'I don't feel anything'."

"Even when she killed Tobias she didn't feel anything," Elliot said.

"She was institutionalized after that, wasn't she?" Skoda asked.

"Yeah, she tried to kill herself there," Elliot told him, "Stuck a knife in the bed and threw herself back against it."

"Points for originality," Skoda commented, "Do you know how she acted towards the staff there?"

"Well, they didn't seem to have any complaints about her," Olivia said, "She was probably one of the better patients they had."

"Hmmm, but now she's biting the doctors and getting into physical fights with them when they try to examine her," Skoda said.

"She also beat the hell out of a desk when she came in to talk about Tobias," Elliot remembered.

"Okay," Skoda was trying to piece it together, "She doesn't react when she's raped, but she will fly into violent rages when she's just physically attacked."

"It doesn't make sense," Olivia said.

"It does if in her mind she's established that the rapes were not a personal attack on her, she knows that what happened this time _was_ personal."

"How the hell can you be raped and not take it as being a _personal_ attack?" Olivia asked.

"There's the million dollar question," Elliot replied.

* * *

The next day, Elliot paid another visit to the Keller household. He had planned to knock and announce himself but he heard something come from the back of the house and he went around to see what it was. Going around to the back porch, he saw the screen door was the only thing separating him from the kitchen of the house. He peered in through the screen and saw Tony over by the stove. Elliot tapped on the glass and got his attention.

Tony turned the burner on low and went over to the door, opened it and went back to the stove, saying only to Elliot, "Don't you guys have anywhere to go?"

"How're you guys doing?" Elliot asked.

"What we? My daughter is the one who was knocked into oblivion," Tony said as he jabbed a fork into two sausages in the skillet and put them on a plate, "You hungry?"

"No thanks. How's Toni doing?"

"Sore," Tony answered as he sat down, "At the hospital they gave her some pills to take for the pain."

"She taking them?" Elliot asked.

"She was, but they made her wiry and she couldn't sleep, so it became a choice, pain or insomnia."

"What about now?" Elliot asked.

"I gave her a little bourbon, that'll kill two birds, dulls out the pain _and_ puts her to sleep," Tony explained.

"But she's doing alright?"

"Oh yeah, she's just like me, nothing can keep her down," Tony said, "I just thank God I'm out of prison now and am able to keep an eye on her."

Tony became unusually quiet after that. Elliot had an idea this was a sore subject for him to talk about.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I spent eight years in that hellhole," Tony threw down his fork, "I died in there. I'm alive now, but I spent eight years dead already." He looked up at Elliot, "You know, Detective, you never really think about all the stuff that makes life good, until you're locked up in a cage, eyes on you all the time, people with guns and clubs ordering you around like a dog, telling you when to eat, when to sleep, all that crap. _Only_ an idiot who had a chance to get out of prison would ever _intentionally_ screw up so he had to go back."

It would seem then, Elliot thought, that it was confirmed what people said for years, the world was _full_ of idiots.

"The food in there sucked, can you imagine going eight years without a beer?" He stabbed one of the sausages with his fork, "Or something like this…or going outside and not having barbed wire counting off how far you can go. Those're the things nobody notices, but they're the only things that make living worth it. Morning after I got out of Rikers, I just stood outside and looked up at the sky. You _see_ the sky when you're on prison grounds, but you don't _notice_ it, you don't notice how bright the sun is, or how blue the sky is. You never really notice how great those things are, until you're looking at them in a setting where barbed wire and guard towers don't interrupt the view."

The moment passed and Tony Keller was back to his wiry self again, "But I'm out now, and it doesn't matter what anybody does, they stab me, they shoot me, I jumped off that platform and spewed my guts all over the floor but I ain't going _anywhere_. They can't kill me, no matter what they try."

"Let's just hope Toni's as invincible," Elliot said.

* * *

Elliot's problem was that he was a human being, made of flesh, and he had a heart in the center of his chest that pounded every day. Every case he worked, he took home with him at the end of the day, the times he _did_ go home. Since the night they'd found Toni, he'd spent a grand total of perhaps sixteen hours at home in the last four days, and during that brief time he _was_ with Kathy, she started on him again about how hard he was becoming to live with.

Ever since he'd transferred to SVU all those years ago it had been hard between the two of them, more times than not he stayed gone late into the night, sometimes he didn't go home for days. He knew it wasn't fair to Kathy but he had a job to do. And it wasn't just like any other job in the world where he could just go home and tell his wife about his day. He hadn't even told her about Toni coming back into the picture this time because he wanted to spare _somebody_ the gory details. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw the blood, the bruises, he saw Toni pinned to the ground with half a dozen men trying to stomp her to death.

The nights when he finally went home, he didn't go to sleep, he just laid in bed next to Kathy and stared up at the ceiling thinking about it all, and when he did try to sleep, all he did was toss and turn until it was time to get up again. Kathy noticed and the next morning when he left for work, she had a quick, brief word with him that cut to the chase.

* * *

Toni entered the main room where everybody's desks were and saw Olivia already at hers.

"Hey Olivia," she said.

Olivia looked up, "Hey, how're you doing?"

"Not so bad," she answered as she went over to the desk, "Is Elliot alright?"

"Why?" Olivia asked.

"I just passed by him in the bathroom and he looks like he's been crying, either that or maybe he got drunk last night and the hangover hasn't worn off," Toni said.

"Wait here," Olivia got up from her desk and headed off to the men's room, she went in and found Elliot standing by the mirror.

"Elliot, are you okay?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Toni just came by and said you didn't look good."

He tried to laugh and said, "I know, I got an earful from her last night about my 'two kegs'."

"Kathy giving you hell again about work?" Olivia asked.

"Yeah she's threatening to take the kids and move without telling me again," he told her.

"You haven't told her what's been going on?"

"And I'm not going to," Elliot said, "You remember what I told that psychiatrist, that's how _I_ feel about it, what's she going to think about it all?"

They went back and found Toni sitting on the edge of Elliot's desk, looking at a picture of his family.

"Look nice," she said as she put the frame down, "Tell me something, Elliot, am I ever going to get to meet your family, or am I going to be shut away on the side and in the closet like a mistress?"

Elliot wasn't quite sure how to respond to that one.

"Don't get me wrong," she continued, "I could do a hell of a lot better than you."

Olivia laughed, "You and me both."

He ignored their comments and asked Toni, "What're you doing here?"

"I was hoping maybe you'd have something new," she answered.

"No, not yet," Olivia told her.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," Toni said as she got off Elliot's desk and headed for the exit.

"I'll run you back home," Elliot told her.

She stopped and looked back at him, "No thanks, I can take care of myself."

* * *

"I'll say this for Toni, she's very resilient," Olivia said that night as they headed for the bar on Third Avenue.

"She's being stubborn," Elliot corrected her.

"That too."

"She's not thinking, if she was smart at all she'd know to be scared about what's going on. She knows we don't have any idea who these guys are, where to find them, they could be anywhere."

"Stop it, Elliot," Olivia dryly commented, "You're going to give Munch a run for his money in paranoia soon. Well…" they reached the front doors of the bar, "Here goes nothing."

They pushed into the place and were immediately blinded by the smoke and the gawdy lights illuminating the place. Looking around the place, all the tables were occupied by freaks that looked like a Hells Angels convention.

"See anybody that matches the pictures?" Elliot asked.

Olivia shook her head, "No."

She went over to the payphone, dropped in some quarters and dialed the number for the weather report. While she made a good show of waiting for someone to pick up the damn phone, Elliot scanned the occupants of the bar, none of them were even close to what Toni had described.

Olivia slammed the receiver back on the hook and said to Elliot, "They're not home, we'll just have to try and get a cab."

They left the bar but no sooner had they headed out the doors, they saw a new crowd pull up.

"Now _those_ look like the guys she was telling us about," Elliot said.

They watched as several large skinheads got off their motorcycles and headed for the bar.

"I'm going to try something, cover me," Olivia told him.

She walked away from him and headed over to cross paths with the men to see what they would do. She did her best imitation of a defenseless little woman all alone in the big city. She felt one of them grab her arm and he spun her around and asked her, "Where're you going?"

"Let go of me," Olivia told him and tried to pull away.

A second man grabbed her other arm hard and told her, "You're not going anywhere."

"Police!" Elliot came out of the shadows with his gun drawn, "Don't move!"

They let go of Olivia and she simultaneously pulled her own gun on them and got on the radio for backup.

* * *

"So these are the bastards that attacked my daughter?" Tony asked as he looked in through the two-way mirror.

"Well they're not confessing to anything," Olivia said, "But if we can get Toni to ID them in a lineup, then we can hold them and find out."

"Where is she anyway?" Elliot asked.

"After you called me, I called her at the library, she said she'd be on her way over."

"Why didn't you go down and pick her up?" Elliot asked.

"I was going to but she said not to bother," Tony said, "Just to meet her here."

"Well we have Fin and Munch out looking for her," Elliot said, "Hopefully they'll be here soon."

"How many of them did you get?" Tony asked.

"We have eight of them in eight separate rooms and cells at the moment," Elliot said, "Eight was all Toni said were there."

"And we're hoping one of them will be a new member who'll flip to save his own skin," Olivia said.

"I'm not holding my breath," Elliot told them, "They all look like they've gone through the wringer and know the prison routine."

"Well then they know," Cragen said, "That we can hold all of them here for 24 hours before we charge them. I hope they're ready for an extended visit."

"Elliot!" Fin yelled as he came rushing in.

They turned and were already expecting to hear the worst.

"What is it?" Elliot asked.

"We found Toni," he answered.


	3. Chapter 3

The detectives and Tony rushed through the hall to the hospital room and busted in through the door and stopped in their tracks at the sight before them. John sat in the chair next to the hospital bed where Toni lay, not moving; he shook his head grimly at the others.

Elliot and Olivia couldn't believe what they saw and even Tony Keller himself could hardly recognize his own daughter because of what had been done to her. Her whole face was swollen; aside from the mass bruising on one cheek she had a big bruise on one temple, her whole jaw was swollen, her neck was also swollen and bruised. She couldn't talk, she couldn't move, she couldn't even turn to look at them except through her eyes, one of which was had tears flowing freely out of it.

"What happened?" Elliot demanded to know.

"They really worked her over this time," Munch said, "We found her on 97th Street…this time she'd managed to crawl out to the curb and flag our car before collapsing. They tore a large patch of hair right out of her head, tried to break her jaw, punched her in the throat, beat her in the face more than a few times, then in general up and down her body, and that's just what we know about so far. They ran a rape kit and took her clothes."

Elliot looked over at Tony, who even from behind was looking like a time bomb about to go off. Tony said nothing and ran out of the room, with Elliot following after him. Toni didn't take well to the sudden abandonment and tried to get up, but Munch and Olivia rushed to her sides and forced her to stay where she was.

Tony ran through the halls of the hospital floor screaming like a maniac, scaring the hell out of everybody else in the vicinity. He stopped at one wall and beat his fists into it, busting holes in it, and he did that again, and again, and again, screaming the whole time, until Elliot caught up with him. Elliot grabbed Tony and pulled him away from the wall, Tony struggled and Elliot grabbed Tony by the waist and jerked him off his feet, trying to restrain him. Tony thrashed back against him and Elliot lost his balance and the two fell on the floor. Elliot found it most unusual that at that time, he was able to conjure up the thought in the back of his head, that this must be what it's like to have a little brother.

"Tony! Calm down!" Elliot told him as they both got up again.

"Calm down?" he replied, "You saw what they did to her."

"Tony, you have to calm down for your daughter, she's been traumatized enough already…Tony, do you know that several years ago, I was put before the Morris Commission and they wanted to throw me out of SVU?"

"What for?"

"Because I told a psychiatrist that my way of coping with the victims I had to see every day, was spending hours every day, fantasizing about how to kill the bastards responsible for it, about what would be the perfect way, and I killed them a thousand times…I _know_ what you're going through. But consider your own daughter, she's probably scared out of her mind that you're going to go looking for these guys, and kill them, and then you'll go back to Rikers and she won't see you again."

Tony took in a shallow breath and stretched it out into a long, hissing sigh as he ran his hands over his eyes and through his short hair, trying to figure this whole mess out.

"Okay," he said, "Let's go."

Olivia took the last of the pictures of Toni's injuries and Munch put her gown down again and drew the blankets up on her.

"What have the doctors said?" Olivia asked.

"That she'll have to be here for at least a week," Munch answered, "There's nothing _too_ serious but it'll take a few days for the swelling to go down, during which time she's not going to be able to talk well if at all."

Olivia turned to the door as the two men returned. It looked like they had switched places; Elliot was the one who appeared to be strangely calm while Tony had his arms wrapped around himself, as if he was trying to keep himself from falling apart.

Tony went over to the bed and saw his daughter, who despite her mouth hanging open slightly, she couldn't speak, and she couldn't get up, could only look up at him with her eyes.

"What's going to happen now?" Tony asked the detectives, "Those guys you hauled in."

"We'll hold them for 24 hours, and if we can't get anything out of them, we'll cut them loose but we'll keep a tail on them," Elliot said, "Then once Toni's able to identify them we'll bring them in again."

Tony turned back and looked at his daughter, who looked disappointed that they were going to walk because of something out of her control.

"They won't talk," he knew.

"Well, we could see if the D.A. can get a warrant for their homes," Olivia said, "As much blood as Toni had on _her_, they had to get some on _them, _meaning there has to be some bloody clothes somewhere."

"Unless they tossed them," Tony said.

"We're going to gamble that they aren't that smart," Elliot said.

"Do what you have to," he told them.

"Well, we'll be going now," Munch said, he stopped at the bed and carefully stroked his fingers through Toni's hair, "We'll see you tomorrow, Toni, try and get some rest." Looking to her father, Munch suggested, "You might see about having them bring in a morphine drip for her."

"Munch, where was it that you guys found her tonight?" Olivia asked as they headed for the door.

It was just Elliot and the Kellers left, and Elliot wasn't going anywhere just yet. He looked at Toni and couldn't believe it. He couldn't figure it out, she had told them eight men beat her up, they had arrested eight men, all of which were still at the precinct.

"Toni," he said, "When you're feeling better, do you think you'll be able to tell us who did this to you?"

She just looked up at him for about a minute before giving her head the slightest nod.

"Detective," Tony said, "I'm going to be staying with her tonight but she's going to need some things from home. Can you swing by there and pick her up a change of clothes?"

"Sure," Elliot said.

"She's got a nightgown, you'll probably find that on the bed somewhere…but be careful when you go in her room."

"Why?" Elliot asked.

"She ran out of shelf space so she started stacking her books up, now it's a pile about five feet high and it's right by the door, I look for the whole thing to come falling down one day and kill somebody, of course maybe that was her intention," he glanced at her, then back to Elliot and said, "You might grab a few of them too if she's going to be here for a while."

"You got it."

"Thanks, Detective, I really appreciate this," Tony said.

* * *

Elliot entered the front door and turned on the lights for the front hall. He made his way up the staircase and hit the light switch at the head of the stairs so he could see what he was doing. He came to the door on the left, opened it, and reached in for the light switch to the bedroom and turned it on and went in.

The first thing Elliot noticed was the leaning tower of books Tony had warned him about. There must have been at least 200 books in the pile and no part of it looked too sturdy and Elliot thought the whole thing was going to topple over. When it didn't, he looked at the top books and glanced over the titles. It looked like Toni had been building a fine collection of most everything; war novels, humor books, adventure stories, horror and mystery anthologies, plays, biographies, and quite a variety of true crime. He figured that was the last thing she needed to be reading about, but Elliot also knew Toni had been put through too much crap to experience nightmares much anymore, so he grabbed a couple of volumes from the Tarzan series and a big book of scary stories presented by Alfred Hitchcock.

With the books under his arm, Elliot went over to the bed and there he had to sort through a mess of clothes, books, CDs, Toni's portable player and half a deck of playing cards before he found Toni's nightgown. Well, it wasn't much of a gown; it looked like a short nightshirt that probably wouldn't go down much farther than her hips. But he knew the Kellers were not known for their modesty, so he collected that too. He grabbed several of her clothes that were strewn over the bed and figured he had everything she might need. But just as he was about to leave, he looked and saw something that caught his attention. At the corner foot of the bed, pressed against the wall were a couple of large stuffed animals. One was a big stuffed cat and the other…a teddy bear that Elliot recognized very well. It was the same teddy bear that had been sent to Toni two years ago when she was in the hospital, the bear that had been carrying Tobias Wentworth's gun, the one that Tony had had sent to her.

Elliot put the things down on the bed and reached over and picked up the teddy bear. He found the Velcro flaps on the bottom and opened them up and reached in. He felt something and, expecting the worst, reached further in. He grabbed a hold of something and pulled it out. It was a little white paper bag, Elliot unrolled the top and looked in and saw…with much relief that it was just an assortment of candy from the grocery store. Elliot couldn't help being a little paranoid about Toni. It had been said plenty of times that if her father were going to kill somebody, he would never use a gun, his hands were deadly enough. But Elliot wasn't so sure about Toni, she had a bad habit of being caught with them in hand, and he felt he _knew_ she had it in her to use one, but he wondered just how correct he might be about that. He hoped he was wrong.

* * *

"Two assaults on the same vic in less than a week?" Cragen said, "What the hell's going on here?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Olivia said, "Casey's trying to get a warrant so we can search their home."

"Home?"

"Apparently they're all currently residing in the same house," Olivia told him.

"What I don't get is how we caught these guys and this still happened," Cragen said, "Who's this other guy?"

"We don't know and she was knocked in the jaw and the throat hard enough that she can't tell us," Munch replied, "Not yet anyway."

"The nurse gave us her clothes and we handed them over to the lab to check again," Olivia said, "We're just running in circles on this one."

They saw Elliot enter and he looked like hell.

"How's Toni doing?" Olivia asked.

Elliot didn't answer and just shook his head. "How's Casey doing on the warrant?"

Casey Novak came running in behind him and said, "I've got it."

"How'd you manage that?" Olivia asked.

"Don't ask," Casey told her, "It covers the house and the garage."

"Alright, let's go," Elliot said.

* * *

"This place doesn't look capable of housing eight people," Elliot said as they made their way through the one-story house. He looked at the floors that were covered with empty beer bottles, crushed cans, drug paraphernalia, half eaten food, used condoms, and dirty magazines, "In fact, it doesn't look suitable for housing anything other than roaches."

Munch took notice of the anti-Semitic paraphernalia that covered the walls, "Hate Jews, hate the blacks, ironic as it is, I doubt what these neo-Nazis did is going to qualify as a hate crime."

"Okay, let me think," Elliot said, "If I were one of these morons…what would I do with clothes that are covered in blood?"

"Depending on where the blood came from, probably frame them and put them on the wall," Munch commented.

"I found something!" they heard Olivia call from somewhere else in the house.

Munch and Elliot crossed through the living room, the dining room and into the kitchen. Olivia came out of the bathroom carrying two shirts that were almost completely covered in dark, dried bloodstains.

"I doubt they all cut their heads shaving," Munch said.

* * *

"We decided we're going to screw with them a bit," Olivia told Tony the next morning at the hospital, "We're going to keep them locked up and let them think that we don't have anything and they'll be able to walk out by nine o' clock tonight. When it gets just before the 24th hour, then we tell them that we found the bloody clothes and we're having the lab check them, and if one drop of the blood belongs to Toni, they're going to Rikers until the trial."

"Is it hers?" Tony asked.

"We don't know yet, and we're going to get the initial report as soon as it's in, and then we're going to have the boys from the lab come down and say it again for them to hear."

"But you're sure it is," Tony said.

"I'm hoping," Olivia told him.

Olivia looked over at the bed and saw Toni was asleep. "How's she doing?"

"Not good," Tony answered, "All the things wrong with her, I'm surprised they didn't break any of her teeth. Whoever did this, he didn't _do_ a lot of things, but he came close. He didn't break her jaw, but it's still swollen and she can't talk. He punched her in the throat, she survived but she has trouble swallowing. He didn't break her hands but she can't curl them up, she can't even close her fingers enough to hold onto anything. I have to feed her, do you have any idea how humiliating it is for her?"

"At least she has you to help her get through this," Olivia said, "If it were me in her position, I'd be alone."

"She can't eat that garbage they serve in this place," Tony said as he put on his jacket, "Can you watch her so I can run to the store?"

"Sure."

"You're a lifesaver, Olivia," he said as he headed to the door.

"I'm a lifesaver," she dryly repeated as she sat down in Tony's place and watched the girl sleep.

Olivia sighed and reached out, carefully stroking through Toni's hair and watching her chest raise and lower as she breathed deeply in her sleep. Olivia couldn't understand it. She knew Toni Keller was not too popular because she never cooperated with anybody; but she still couldn't understand how anybody would want to kill her, or if not kill her, put her in this situation, twice now.

* * *

"The reason Toni didn't have any of their blood on her was because they collected it on their own clothes," Elliot said, "Along with a whole puddle of her own."

"So it matches," Olivia said.

"Yep, and I'm hoping that when Casey goes to court, she manages to get remand, though I really don't know how much good that's going to do."

"Well she better," Olivia said, "Otherwise Tony might kill them all himself."

"You really think he would?" Cragen asked.

"His daughter is 19 years old, she's stuck in a hospital bed and he has to feed her fruit cups and vitamin drinks because she can't chew, she can barely swallow and her hands are too damaged to hold a spoon," Olivia said, "If I were him and I had the opportunity he did, _I'd_ kill them myself."

"Well, don't let the defense catch wind of that," Cragen told her, "Meanwhile, where are we on the other assault?"

"The lab sent her clothes back," Elliot held up a bag, "Blood, mud, and about thirty strands of her hair, all with the pulp attached to them meaning they were all ripped out. Unfortunately there's nothing that implicates her attacker."

Olivia took the bag from Elliot and took the clothes out, her T-shirt, her bra, her underwear, and…

"El," she said as she held the jeans up for him to see.

Elliot looked and saw what Olivia saw; the knees were covered in mud and it trailed off down the legs.

"Son of a bitch tried to put her on her knees," Elliot said.

* * *

The next day, Olivia went to see Toni in her hospital room when Tony wasn't there. Toni still wasn't up to talking much yet, but she was able to get up and out of the bed. She sat in the chair by the bed and let Olivia pick up a brush and mess up her hair.

"Okay, Toni," Olivia said as she put the brush down, "If you wear it like this for a while, that should cover it until the new hairs come in."

Toni let out a low grumble that Olivia took as a 'thanks' and headed back over to her bed. Olivia heard a rip and turned and saw Toni had torn the paper hospital gown open down to her navel, revealing she was wearing a black bra that day.

"That's attractive," Olivia sarcastically commented.

"'Is comfort-ble," Toni got out.

Olivia couldn't help but laughing at her answer.

"Besides that," Toni added, "Shock value if Elliot comes in."

"You really seem to enjoy making Elliot squirm," Olivia said.

Toni nodded her head and said, "Tha's right."

"Why?"

"He sees freaky shit every day, if I can still make him visibly uncomfortable, that's something, isn't it?" Toni asked.

Olivia tried to keep a straight face but couldn't and she about laughed again, "I guess you have a point."

"Toni!"

They heard Elliot calling from down the hall. He came in and saw Olivia there and wasn't sure at first what was going on.

"Liv, what're you doing here?" he asked.

"Tony had to go out and pick up some more stuff that Toni can swallow, so I offered to watch her until he got back," Olivia said.

Toni watched from where she lay in the bed and she saw something change in Elliot's eyes.

"You called him?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah, why?"

It was obvious that Elliot wasn't saying what he was thinking.

"What is it?" Olivia asked.

Elliot lowered his voice so Toni wouldn't hear him as he said to Olivia, "You sure seem to be coming over to see him a lot when there's no one else around."

"Elliot," Toni said, getting both their attention, "Olivia, will you give us a minute?"

Olivia nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her.

"You know, Elliot," Toni said, "It wouldn't kill you to leave Olivia alone. She _is_ a grown woman you know, she _can_ make her own decisions."

"I know that," Elliot said.

"Then get off her damn back!" Toni told him, "You're not her brother, quit acting like you can run her life for her."

"I'm her partner."

"That's right, and that's the extent of it, Elliot, you come in here acting like you decide what she does and doesn't do," Toni said, "She is a grown ass woman, she can make her own decisions, she doesn't need you hovering over her, telling her what she can and can't do."

* * *

A couple of days later, Huang was back in town and was quickly filled in on everything that had gone on since Toni came back into the picture. He and Elliot headed to the hospital to see if she was in any condition to talk about what had happened. When they arrived at her room, they found her asleep and her father was nowhere in sight. Elliot checked the bathroom and saw Tony wasn't there, and he couldn't figure out where the man could be.

"Toni," he said as he shook her shoulder.

She mumbled a couple of times and opened her eyes and slowly looked up, "Elliot…" she caught something in the corner of her eye and struggled to look behind her and she saw Huang, "Hey, George, what're you doing here?"

"Toni, where's your father?" Elliot asked.

"He had to go out," she said, "He said he'd be back later."

"How're you feeling?" he asked her.

"I'm doing alright, I can talk now," she said, "Still can't get a grip on anything though, and I'm still having trouble swallowing."

"Well, Huang wants to talk to you, I'm going to go out and…"

"Eavesdrop?" Toni suggested, "Or keep watch for my father, I suppose."

Elliot didn't answer her and just backed out of the room. Toni readjusted herself in the bed so she was sitting up.

"So…what's up, Doc?" Toni asked.

"I heard that you gave Dr. Skoda some trouble," Huang said.

"Oh that," she replied, "Well, at first it was a simple misunderstanding."

"But you wouldn't tell him anything," Huang said.

"No I wouldn't," she agreed, "I don't like him, I think he's a pervert."

Huang couldn't help smiling though he did manage to keep himself from laughing. "I also understand that you haven't been too forthcoming with the detectives about what happened to you."

"It's complicated, Doc," Toni said, "It was so much to remember…besides, I left some details out because I didn't want Elliot flying off the deep end as we both know he's wont to do when a case gets him worked up."

"The parts that you told Detective Munch?"

"Yeah some of them…look, Doc, I know Elliot's still waiting for the other shoe to drop, to find out I was raped, or that they tried to rape me…but that isn't it. They just beat the hell out of me."

"Some might see being stomped in the genitals as being a personal attack," Huang started to say.

"Well the whole thing was clearly personal, otherwise they _would_ have just raped me and maybe _then_ killed me. But how it's personal, I don't know, I never saw any of those guys before."

"Do you think your father might know them?" Huang asked.

"No. I don't know who they are, but it's to my understanding that they're not going anywhere, so I guess we'll have a chance to find out."

"What about the second attack?" Huang asked.

"What about it?" she asked.

"Well Elliot and Olivia had already locked up the eight men you described, _was_ it just eight?"

"Yes it was just eight, I don't know where that other guy came from."

"What did he look like?" Huang asked.

"He was white, big, looked to be somewhere in his 30s…"

"Like the others?"

"Not quite, this one had hair, short, dark brown hair, he wasn't a skinhead in the literal form," Toni said.

"But you suspect he _was_ another white supremacist?"

"Not much guess to it, he had on a muscle shirt and I could see White Pride tattooed on his shoulder."

"What did he do?" Huang asked.

Toni got a look on her face that said 'why do I have to do this?' and she said, "He just came out of nowhere. I was on my way to the police station and he just came up on me and he grabbed me and he tried to choke me. I fought with him, and he got angry and hit me in the throat, I thought it would kill me. I hacked up on him and he started pounding into me with his fists."

"Did he knock you down?" Huang asked.

"No," she said, "I managed to stay on my feet for the most part, then when he took off I just kind of slid down and landed on my back. I pulled myself up and headed out to the street, and I about hit Munch and Fin's car."

Huang knew something in her story didn't match what the detectives had found.

"When they took your clothes at the hospital, they found mud on the knees of your jeans…did he try to force you to perform oral sex on him?"

Toni looked at him like he'd said something funny. She made a disgusted face and got out an exaggerated, "Now that's just gross, ewwwww…"

She started laughing but it wasn't an amused laugh, it was tired, anxious, perhaps even nervous; Toni covered her eyes with her hands as she continued laughing hysterically.

"Toni, are you alright?"

George turned and saw Elliot and Tony standing in the doorway.

"I'm fine," she answered, controlling herself, "The detectives were just asking some questions about what happened."

A nurse came to the doorway and looked at Elliot, "Excuse me, are you Detective Stabler?"

"Yes."

"Would you mind coming to the front desk? There's a woman on the phone who says you left your phone at her place."

Elliot checked his pockets, swore and followed the nurse out of the room.

"So you're doing alright?" Tony asked his daughter.

"Yeah."

"Good, I need to go wash up, I'll be out in a minute."

Toni waited until the bathroom door closed behind her father until she spoke to Huang again, "Can I tell you something, doctor?"

"What is it?" he asked.

"You know, a lot of times someone who's raped, they take their rapist to court…and the whole time the defense attorney goes through the lines of 'the rape didn't _really_ happen, did it?' 'isn't it true you're just trying to ruin this person's reputation?' Blah blah blah. And you know the victims, they _always_ say, 'if you don't know what it's like to be raped, I hope you never find out'." Toni shook her head from side to side with a borderline sinister look on her face, "Not me. As far as I'm concerned all those lawyers can just go have it done to them. As far as I'm concerned, every last one of them can be raped seven ways to Sunday, and when it's over, I'm going to be there saying 'There….that wasn't _really_ something you didn't want to do, was it?' 'They didn't do really do anything wrong because you were enjoying it, you _know_ you did, isn't that right?' _That_, doc, would be justice, because, you don't know what anything's like until you experience it for yourself."

* * *

"She's either opening up an old wound or she's trying to say that something happened again," Huang told the detectives when they returned to the station.

"I thought the rape kit came back negative," Munch said.

"It did," Olivia said, "Doesn't mean he didn't take precautions though."

"And he probably didn't get a chance to finish," Elliot added.

"I don't get it," Cragen said to Huang, "If she was raped again, why didn't she tell you?"

"She saw her father coming back and she quit talking," Huang said, "Tony Keller is violent enough when he just thinks his daughter's been assaulted. If he found out she was raped he would probably go on a homicidal rampage, and nobody knows this better than his own daughter."

"Well we have the original eight Nazis still in lockup, who's this other guy?" Munch asked, "Is there a connection between them?"

"That's what we need to figure out," Cragen said.

"I think we need to talk to Toni again, without her father there," Elliot said.

"Good luck," Olivia told him, "I got off with the hospital 10 minutes ago, Tony checked his daughter out of the hospital and took her home."

"Already?" Cragen asked.

"I thought she wasn't supposed to leave until next week," Fin said.

"She's not…so why did he take her out already?" Olivia asked.

"Toni's been in hospitals a lot over the past couple of years," Elliot said, "First it was because Tobias mutilated her face, then because she tried to kill herself, then she went and had reconstructive surgery done to correct what Tobias did, then it was for treatment of carbon monoxide poisoning, then last week because eight guys tried to kill her. I'm sure by now she can't stand the sight of a hospital."

"Great, so now we have to try speaking to her without him around in his own home," Olivia said.

"Maybe it can be done," Elliot said, "Tony's a widower, he doesn't have friends and he doesn't date, he's alone with his daughter…and in her present condition he's not too fond of the idea of leaving her alone."

Elliot took out his cell phone and started to dial a number.

"What're you going to do?" Olivia asked.

"I'm going to try something," the person on the other end picked up, "Hello, Tony? It's Elliot…I understand you checked Toni out of the hospital a little early……uh huh, well, if you need to run out somewhere I can come over and keep an eye on her until you get back…you do? Okay, fine…goodbye."

"Well?" Munch asked.

"Tony needs to head out and pick up some groceries," Elliot said, "I'll go over and see if I can get her to talk. You coming, Doc?"

"I think Toni's already said everything she plans to tell me," George answered.

* * *

Tony opened the front door and let Elliot in. "Thanks for coming, Detective."

"How's Toni doing?" Elliot asked.

"Sore…she's in on the couch because she can't make it up the stairs yet," Tony answered as he put on his jacket, "I gave her a little bourbon and she should sleep for a while."

"Would she be lucid though if she woke up?" Elliot asked.

"Oh yeah, she's like me, she can't get drunk, she could drink grain alcohol, nothing."

Tony left and Elliot waited a few minutes before going into the living room. Toni was asleep on the couch, dressed in her regular clothes again. Elliot hated to wake her up but he knew they had to find out what had really happened.

"Toni, can you hear me?"

Her eyes slowly opened, "Elliot? What're you doing here?"

"Your dad needed to go to the store for a few minutes, how're you feeling?"

"I'm sore, Elliot, I hurt, all the time I'm in pain, and I'm also angry, I'd like to find the guy that did this to me and I want to kill him, slowly, painfully."

"You know," Elliot said as he sat down, "Dr. Huang's worried about you."

"Well why should he be?"

"Well, he told me what you said."

"Of course he did, I'm not _his_ patient, there's no privilege," she said.

"Look, Toni, I know that it's embarrassing having to answer those kinds of questions…"

"It's not embarrassing, I just don't like it," Toni said.

"But Toni, we need to know everything that happened," Elliot told her.

"Why, you think it's going to help you find this guy?" Toni asked.

"We have to know what all he's done so we can figure out what all the DA can charge him with and prosecute him for."

"Trust me, Elliot," Toni said, shaking her head, "You don't want to know about this."

"Toni, _did_ he rape you?"

"No…alright? But it's not for lack of trying that he didn't," she said, "You want to find out who he is…I'd check and see who recently got released from prison around here."

"What did he do?" Elliot wanted to know.

Toni looked him dead in the eyes as she answered coldly, very matter-of-factly, "He started to push me down onto my knees, he told me to blow him, and he said I better do a good job of it otherwise he'd rip me into two. Now, I know that could be a very generic threat, but…it does have the ring of something somebody in prison would say to his new bitch, doesn't it?"

Elliot was left speechless, unable to talk after that little revelation. He felt stunned. He had heard similar stories, and far worse from plenty of rape victims, but this one left him not knowing what to do next. And neither he nor Toni was aware that whey had been overheard by a third party.

Tony Keller stood out in the front hall pressed up against the wall listening to them talk, and he'd heard every word of his daughter's recollection.


	4. Chapter 4

"I got back from the store early and I heard what Toni told you," Tony told Elliot before he left.

Elliot's overall composure changed when he heard that. "Oh man, Tony, I was hoping you wouldn't hear that."

"Yeah, I kind of figured that's why you offered to watch her," Tony said, "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill anybody, I just want to. But I think I can help you."

"How?" Elliot asked.

"Toni told you what that guy said to her. She said it sounded like a prison threat…she's right, I knew a guy in Rikers who said that line all the time," Tony told him.

"Who?" Elliot asked.

"This guy said the same thing every time he got a new cellmate, it became his trademark," Tony said, "And if I didn't have to think about it, I could've told you his name, but now that I think of it, I'm having trouble remembering what it is."

"Well try to think, Tony, we have to find this guy," Elliot told him.

"I know, I know…it was, Sankt, I think…"

"Sankt? That's an Aryan name, isn't it?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah…his first name was…Chris," Tony said.

"Would he still be in Rikers?"

"He should be, at least I would sure as hell hope so, he's doing three life sentences for five counts of murder one," Tony explained.

"And let me guess, he's a white pride freak," Elliot said.

"You bet your barrel ass," Tony responded.

* * *

"We checked on Christopher Sankt, he's a lifer in Rikers for killing five black teenagers 10 years ago," Olivia told Cragen.

"And he's still there, right?"

"We checked with the warden and the guards, he's still in his cell," Munch said.

"And we're sure he's been there this whole time?"

"As far as we know," Olivia said.

"I've been going over the photos and the medical reports of what happened to Toni in the past couple weeks," Huang said, "A lot of bruises and a lot of swelling, but other than that, I'm not seeing much."

"I don't get the point," Elliot said.

"The men who attacked her left her bloody and sore, but she was still alive and in considerably well condition, they could have broken her bones…"

"They did try, they tried to break her arms," Elliot said.

"But they didn't succeed, and they didn't try again after the first time," Huang said, "Elliot," Huang pointed to the enlarged pictures of Toni's injuries, "If this was Kathleen, what would be going through your mind right now?"

"That I'd want to kill the guy," Elliot said.

"But you don't know who did it, and in Tony's case, he's not a cop, so he has no way of figuring out who it is," Huang said, "Meanwhile, he's the only person around to take care of her…whoever's doing this isn't doing it because they want Toni dead, they want to make her father suffer. Granted, if they had broken her arms, he'd have to care for her a lot longer, but what's happened instead was he was roped into a false sense of security. The original attack wasn't too severe, Toni was able to get up and walk away from it after a couple of days, she started going out alone again. Then this happens, and this time she's practically bedridden, unable to talk for days, unable to feed herself, unable to do anything; so Tony has to do everything, he has to feed her, he has to help her into the bathroom, he has to dress her."

"Well he wouldn't have to do that if she'd just let the orderlies do their job," Munch said, "But if this guy Sankt's been in prison for 10 years, there's no way he could know that."

"But she made an amazing recovery this time and while she's still not capable of doing everything she was before, she's recuperating at a faster rate than most people would in her current position," Huang said.

"But Tony's probably getting worried about what happens next time Toni goes out by herself," Olivia commented, "If we don't catch this guy, next time it could be worse."

"Doc," Cragen said, "What're the odds whoever's doing this will kill her?"

"Going by what we have now, I'd say very unlikely," Huang said, "If she were to die in one of these attacks it would most likely be accidental, or a result from severe blood loss. Whoever's behind it doesn't want her to die, as long as she's alive but in pain, Tony Keller has reason to worry, his main concern is his daughter. The minute she's dead, he doesn't have anything holding him back, he'll go into another homicidal frenzy."

"So as long as she lives, her attacker is safe," Olivia said, "And he knows it, he's just screwing with all of us."

"Well it wasn't Sankt," Casey said as she entered the room, "I've just returned from Rikers…Christopher Sankt is locked in his cell 23 hours of every day, he has no phone privileges, no visitors, no mail, he has absolutely no contact with the outside world."

"Well Tony was in Rikers and from what he's told me, that's not very reassuring," Elliot said, "In prison there's a supply and demand for everything, whatever you want, somebody can take care of it."

"Meaning he could still have put a proverbial hit out on Tony Keller's kid," Munch said, "But who?"

"Check his family," Casey said, "I checked the visitor's log, the order that he have no contact with anybody on the outside was only enforced two years ago after he was caught trying to get a cell phone smuggled in. Before that, a Bryan Sankt came to see him regularly."

"Bryan Sankt?" Elliot repeated.

"His brother," Casey said.

"One thing about this I don't understand though," Olivia said, "Why would Sankt want to come after Toni?"

"Tony said he had trouble with everybody in Rikers because he didn't play by the rules," Elliot said, "And he said he especially had trouble with the skinheads, and he still remembers the line Sankt uses on all his new girlfriends…I wonder if Sankt tried the same thing with him, but Tony wouldn't go quietly."

"He wouldn't go at all," Olivia corrected him.

* * *

Toni remained where she was on the couch in the living room, looking perfectly miserable. Her father came into the room and started to talk, but he saw the look on her face and realized something was the matter.

"What's wrong?" he asked her.

"I'm sick of this couch," Toni said, "All I want is to go upstairs to my own bed…but I can't get up the stairs yet."

Tony glanced out to the hall and saw the staircase, and a thought came to him.

"We'll see about that," he said.

He went over to the couch and pulled the covers back and slipped one arm under Toni's back and the other under her thighs and picked her up and carried her out of the living room. Toni wrapped her arms around her father's neck as he carried her up the stairs. Once in her room, he lowered the top half of her body onto the bed, but her feet were still up on his shoulder as he pulled back the covers, then he carefully put her legs down and settled her in.

"Thanks, Daddy," she said.

Tony smoothed the covers out on top of her and stroked through her hair momentarily, "How's that, is that alright?"

She nodded.

"Good, now you go to sleep and I'll bring dinner up later, okay?"

Toni nodded again.

"Good," Tony kissed her on the forehead, "Love you."

Toni smiled weakly, her eyes about closed and she looked instead like she was about to cry as she let out a low, quiet, "I concur."

Tony laughed and kissed his daughter again, then left the room. Toni wasn't able to turn over onto her side yet, so she just lay on her back looking up at the ceiling as she started to think.

* * *

"Did you get any sleep last night?" Olivia looked over at Elliot as they drove to the Keller house the next day.

"Oh I think about half an hour," he answered, "You?"

Olivia slightly shook her head, "Closed my eyes for two minutes and I just kept seeing her back in that hospital."

"Me too," Elliot nodded.

They pulled up at the curb and got out and as soon as they got on the sidewalk, they saw an unusual sight up ahead. Toni was laid face down on a sun lounge in a blue two-piece swimsuit with a large sunhat covering her head.

"Toni?"

She picked her head up and looked over at them.

"Hey Olivia, Elliot…what's up?"

"Well we think we might have found something out about your second attack," Olivia said, "Is your father around?"

Toni nodded once, "He's in the house fixing drinks, he'll be out in a minute."

"How're you feeling, Toni?" Elliot asked as he squatted down beside her to see her better.

"I can't complain," she replied, "So what'd you find out?"

"Well…"

Elliot stopped when he heard the front door open. Tony came out carrying a tray with a pitcher and two glasses on it.

"Detectives," he said as he set the tray down, "What's going on?"

"We need to talk to you two," Elliot said, "We think we've found our connection to this second beating."

"What?" Tony asked.

"Christopher Sankt is still serving a multiple-life sentence in Rikers, he has no contact with _anybody_ besides the guards and he's not in general population so he doesn't see the other inmates," Elliot said.

"I told you before, that doesn't mean anything," Tony said.

"Yeah, but Sankt has a brother on the outside, he's been arrested a couple of times but nothing stuck…but we'd like Toni to take a look at his mug shot and see if she remembers him," Elliot explained.

Olivia took a paper out of a large envelope and handed it to Toni who looked at it twice before answering. In the picture was a large white man with a bad haircut and Hitler youth tattoos on his body.

"It looks similar," she said, "But this isn't a new mug shot, is it?"

"No, last time he got busted was four years ago," Elliot said, "However, he is still living in New York and we figure we'll pick him up, bring him in for Toni to ID and if it's him, we'll lock him up."

"Great," Toni said rather dryly, then fidgeted on the lounge, "I need to get up."

Tony pulled her to her feet and walked her over to the front steps and when she went in the house, Tony returned to the detectives and said, "During that inital beat down, when they were stomping her they must've knocked her bladder on its side or something, she's been doing a lot of this lately."

"Did you talk to her doctor about it?" Olivia asked.

"Hell no," Tony replied, "After all the time she's spent in the hospital, the last thing she needs is to go in for more tests and more poking and prodding and probing...we figured we'll wait about a week, and if it hasn't changed by then, _then_ we'll go back and see what the doctors think. So where's Sankt's brother living?"

"Over on 12th Avenue," Olivia said.

"Well one thing I still can't figure out," Tony said, "If Chris hasn't had any contact with him, how did Bryan know to come after Toni?"

* * *

"Sankt's not under arrest _yet_," Cragen told the lawyer, "There's no reason for you to be here yet."

"Nice try, _detective_," James Dobson, the 30-something lawyer in the bad suit replied, "You bring my client down here accusing him of raping some girl he's never even met…"

"Wrong, he's accused of _assaulting_ a young woman, _then_ attempting to rape her, _then_ nearly killing her," Olivia said, "And once our victim comes in and identifies him, then we can move onto the next part."

"Yes, where _is_ your so called victim?" Dobson asked, "She's running rather late."

They heard some commotion from outside the door. It opened and Fin came in first, saying, "Sorry we're late, we had a little trouble getting down here."

Coming in behind him was Munch pushing Toni in a wheelchair.

"I can assure you she didn't need _that_ before Sankt beat the hell out of her," Olivia told Dobson

Munch wheeled Toni over to the two-way mirror and he and Fin helped her to her feet.

"Boy you guys got a lot of ugly cops around here," Toni said as she looked at the identity parade before her.

"Toni, do you see the man who assaulted you?" Casey asked.

"Sure," Toni pointed to Sankt, "Number five, dead to rights."

"That's a high handed statement," Dobson said.

"Well you're a high handed person," Munch said, "And I'm using that term generously."

"High handed."

"No, person."

"She positively identified him," Casey said, "It's good enough for me and it'll be good enough for the grand jury."

Fin and Munch helped ease Toni back down into the chair and Munch turned it around and wheeled her out of the room with Fin closing the door behind them.

"You know," Toni said, "I appreciate this but it really wasn't necessary, I _could_ have walked in there."

"We know that," Munch told her with a knowing smirk, "But the defense doesn't."

Fin opened the back door of the car and they got Toni in and he told Munch, "We still gotta get the interior cleaned out, it's got her blood all over the seats."

"I say we leave it as it is," Munch said as he folded up the wheelchair and put it in the trunk, "Then the next time we pick up a perp; we tell him that's what happened to the last guy who gave us trouble."

* * *

"We had Toni direct us through the second crime scene," Elliot told Casey as she headed in for arraignment, "CSU found blood, just hers."

"Well, the other eight skinheads are all being represented by the same lawyer," Casey said, "And he seems smart enough to know with all the evidence against his clients that he doesn't have a prayer, I think he'll play ball with us. The only real problem is going to be Sankt, he and his lawyer are ready to fight to the death."

Elliot looked at the top of the courthouse stairs and saw…

"Toni!"

She and Olivia were already there and it seemed they were waiting for the others. Elliot noticed Toni stood a bit crooked and her legs were turned almost completely to the sides.

"What're you doing here?" Elliot asked.

"Sankt's getting arraigned today, I want to see it," Toni said.

"I have to warn you, Miss Keller," Casey said, "This won't be as easy to settle as the last time, there's no forensic evidence to connect Sankt, he'll probably get out on bail."

"I don't care," Toni replied, "I have never hidden from anything in my life and I'm not about to start now. I had Olivia bring me down because I want to see what happens to the bastard."

"Where's Tony?" Elliot murmured to Olivia.

"He said if Sankt doesn't stay in Rikers until the trial, he'd kill him in front of the judge and everybody," Olivia replied.

They headed inside and reached the right courtroom; Elliot, Olivia and Toni (with obvious difficulty walking) went and sat down with the rest of the spectators while Casey, Sankt and Dobson headed up to the front while the bailiff read the docket number.

"People vs. Bryan Sankt, one charge attempted murder in the first degree, one charge criminal assault in the first degree, one charge attempted rape in the first degree."

"You've been a busy man, I see," the judge said.

"Your Honor," Dobson started.

"Cool your jets, Mr. Dobson, how does your client plead?"

"Not guilty," Sankt answered.

"The people on bail, Miss Novak?" the judge asked.

"Remand, Your Honor," Casey said.

"My client is hardly a flight risk," Dobson said.

"We believe Mr. Sankt to be a danger to the community and it be in the public's best interest if he be held without bail so as not to pose a threat to anybody else."

"There's not even any physical evidence linking my client to the alleged victim," Dobson replied.

The judge seemed to consider both sides and answered, "Well put, Miss Novak, but this isn't a murder charge on the table, bail is set in the amount of $200,000."

* * *

"I'm sorry, Miss Keller but I told you going in that that might happen," Casey said.

"I'm not blaming you, it's just that I know how bail works, you only put in 10% and you can get out," Toni said as they headed for the door, "Sankt looks like a guy who has $20,000 laying around somewhere."

"We're going to put the word in at the department that if he gets out on bail, to have him tailed," Elliot said.

Toni turned around and saw something and she grabbed Elliot by his shirt to get his attention.

"Who's that?" she asked.

Elliot looked and saw who she meant, a black woman in a matching black jacket and skirt and a white blouse. He remembered her well.

"That is Carolyn Maddox, a defense attorney," Elliot said.

"I seem to remember reading about her," Toni commented, "She's the one that argued that women can't rape people, right?"

"Yeah, and today she's taking part in another such case," Casey told them, "So when you head out the door, expect to be bombarded by the media circus."

"I'll get her home," Olivia said, "See you later, Case."

Toni and Olivia exited the courthouse and watched the media frenzy over on the far right side of the steps, waiting for Maddox to come out with her client. Olivia looked and saw Toni standing defensively, her arms folded tightly at her chest.

"What is it?" Olivia asked.

Toni watched as Carolyn and another woman came out and the reporters swarmed them, and Toni said, "I've got an idea."

She went over to the other side of the steps and said to Carolyn, "Excuse me, are you Carolyn Maddox?"

"Why yes I am," she replied proudly.

"I thought so," Toni said, "I seem to recall hearing about you…you're the one who says that women are incapable of committing rape, isn't that correct?"

"Yes it is, women are anatomically unable to commit such an act," Carolyn said, still smiling for the cameras.

"Uh huh," Toni said, unconvinced, "Well let me give you a little tip, lady…when some guy beats you down to the floor till you can't move, and he's too drunk or too stoned to get it up so he penetrates you with his fingers, or a broom handle, or a wrench, or a pistol, or a glass bottle, or a baseball bat, _then_ you can tell me that _that_ doesn't count as rape since he's not using his penis."

Suddenly Carolyn wasn't looking so sure of herself, and the cameras had caught every word of Toni's statement.

Toni turned around and headed down the stairs to Olivia who was waiting at the car.

"Let's go," Toni told her.

"Toni?" Olivia said.

"Wasn't me, I was just making a point," Toni explained her as they got in the car, "Drive like hell."

Olivia stepped on the accelerator and they were out of there, thinking about what the public's response to that statement Toni gave the press was going to be.


	5. Chapter 5

Arthur Branch walked into Jack McCoy's office carrying a newspaper and said, "You see the morning paper yet?"

"No, why?"

"They've got that Keller girl on the front page giving Carolyn Maddox the finger."

Jack looked up at him, "_What?_"

Arthur dropped the paper on Jack's desk and he picked it up.

'Special Victim to Defense Attorney, "You don't know what rape is!"' That was the headline, and it had a blown up picture of Toni Keller on the courthouse steps with her forefinger in Carolyn Maddox's face.

"My mother had that finger," Arthur said, "She used it on my father quite often."

"My God," Jack said as he glanced over the article.

"Toni Keller is certainly making life difficult for the defense attorneys. Gerald Austin's in prison for attempted murder, Norman Rothenberg's new car was mutilated with a blowtorch, and now she's turning Carolyn's own media circus against her. About all that's left is Danielle Melnick and Randolph Dworkin and that should take care of most of the D.A.'s headaches."

Jack looked at the paper and he remembered back, having a discussion with Tony Keller in which the other man made a remark about declaring it open season on defense attorneys. It seemed that the Kellers were making good on their threat.

"If the press is smart, they'll stay away from her," Jack said.

"Carolyn?" Arthur asked.

"Toni, that girl is a walking time bomb and she'll explode when she's pushed to her limit," Jack told him. He still hadn't forgotten that horrible incident in the courthouse's men's room two years before when Toni broke the neck of her attacker during the middle of his trial.

"Given these last two attacks on her that have made the papers, I don't see how they have much choice," Arthur said, "Everybody knows who she is and what's happening to her, she's newsworthy."

"News my eye," Jack said as he looked the paper over again, "They just need a target to sink their hooks into. I saw this girl suffer a mental breakdown once before, if the media doesn't stay away from her, it'll happen again, and they'll have blood on their hands."

"And you," Arthur said, "Being the doting district attorney you are, will try them for criminally negligent homicide, I'm sure."

"Nobody ever said being a prosecutor was easy," Jack said.

"Maybe not but at this time it would seem the ball's in your favor as opposed to them," Arthur told him.

"I remember last year during Gerald Austin's trial, when Toni was brought in to testify…Norman Rothenberg was the defense," Jack said, "He badgered her about things that weren't relevant to the case, trying to slip her up…but she kept a straight face and answered his questions calmly and intelligently every time. He was trying to show everybody that she was a monster, like her father, that if anybody was dangerous and had the capacity to kill, it was her, instead of the bastard who took out a gun in front of 20 cops and shot me."

"Except we know that she _can_ be when the time is right," Arthur said, "_Just_ like her father, the trick is to make sure when either one of them is in a courtroom, it doesn't happen for the jury to see."

* * *

"We have to find out what the deal was between Tony and Christopher Sankt in Rikers," Olivia told Huang, "And Tony has not been too forthcoming with us."

"Even though it means convicting the man who attacked his daughter?"

"He won't talk to us, we're thinking maybe he'll talk to you," Elliot said.

Huang did something that neither detective could ever recall him doing in a situation like this, he laughed.

"I don't think Tony Keller is going to want to talk to me," he said.

"It's worth a try," Olivia said, "He knows that Toni talked to you, she could probably convince him to do the same."

"If you can bring him in, I'll try," Huang told them, "But I know people like Tony Keller, anything he doesn't want to say, he won't, and nothing in my training can change his mind."

"It might if we stressed how important any information he can give us is to making sure Bryan Sankt never gets out of prison," Elliot replied.

* * *

"Can they hear us out there?" Toni asked Huang the next day when they were both in one of the interview rooms at the station.

Huang shook his head, "No."

"So what did you want to see me for?" she asked, "I told you everything I know."

"Maybe you did," he replied, "Your father's been out of Rikers for two years now, hasn't he?"

"About that," Toni answered.

"Did he ever tell you about what happened in prison?"

She shook her head, "No, he never did, I guess he wanted to spare me the gory details of it all…you know, he never wanted me to come and see him in prison, I thought it was just because he didn't want to see me. He never wanted me to ever be inside of a prison for _any_ reason."

"He never mentioned Christopher Sankt to you?" Huang asked.

Toni shook her head again, "No."

"You and your father spend a lot of time together, don't you?"

Toni glared up at him with warning eyes. "I warned you about getting off on your questions, Doc," she said, "We didn't see each other for eight years, hell yes we spend a lot of time together now that we can."

"Do you date?"

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Toni asked, "No, I don't…why should I? I've seen what people are like, I know where the future doctors and lawyers are now, I slept with them from the time I was 12 to the time I was 16, they're all screwed up, confused, hopeless, helpless, sorry sons of bitches…I pity a lot of them, most of them weren't much better off than I was. Everybody who runs away from home does it because somebody somewhere is screwed up, and usually it's not just one person, sometimes it's genetic." She closed her eyes and shook her head, "We're getting off base here, what's going on?"

She didn't wait for him to answer. Her head swayed from one side to the other before dropping like her neck had just snapped.

"Have you been sleeping lately?" Huang asked her.

She shook her head, "I haven't slept for four days, I just keep thinking about the whole mess."

"What about it?"

"We went to see Casey Novak and she said the defense is going to bring up my suicide attempt. I said 'what of it? I'm here now, aren't I? I'm alive and able to testify', she said he's going to use that in his favor, to try and show that I'm mentally unstable. I told her 'completely normal people commit suicide all the time, the doctors at Bellevue even said so'. I do believe that, don't you? I mean come on, _every_ person who kills themselves is not crazy. Some of them just get fed up with everything, some want to end their misery, some just don't care anymore, and life doesn't give them a reason to care. That doesn't have anything to do with being schizo, it's to do with being human," Toni told him, "Survival of the fittest…but every human being is not the fittest, are they?"

"It would appear not," Huang replied, "You however are abnormal by any psychological means."

"Thank you," she said sarcastically, "I'll take that as a compliment…I think."

"Would you be opposed to a psychological evaluation?" Huang asked her.

"I thought you did that two years ago when you told Elliot I wasn't crazy," she replied.

"If the defense _does_ bring up your suicide attempt, he _could_ use it to sway the jury, it would be better for your case if there was a witness for the prosecution who knew what they were talking about," Huang said.

"That's true I suppose," Toni said, "What do you do in one anyway?"

"Well first I'd ask you questions, and then you'd be given some tests to take," Huang said, "It's a _relatively_ painless matter."

Toni's eyes started to slant, "What kind of tests?"

"Tests for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD," Huang explained.

"And thought disorder?" she asked.

That garnered a surprised look from Huang, to which Toni replied, "I'm not as stupid as everybody thinks, though I fail to see how any psychiatrist can pull a mental disorder out of his sleeve based on the way a person talks."

* * *

Once Huang was done trying to shrink Toni's head, she was sent out and her father was sent in. Tony looked around the room as he came in, as if he had no idea what the place looked like, as if he was expecting something to fall down and hit him at any moment. He went over to the table and sat down across from Huang, already looking suspicious.

"So now what?" he asked.

"Now we just talk," Huang told him.

"Already it sounds painful," Tony replied.

"You've spoken to psychiatrists before."

"Yeah, when it meant getting out of prison," Tony said, "What'd you talk to my daughter about?"

"Are you worried about what she said?" Huang asked him.

"What've I got to worry about? We don't have secrets, much…"

"You and Toni spend a lot of time together?" George asked.

"Oh yeah, we both figured we' already been screwed out of eight years, might as well make up for lost time."

"Do you date?" Huang asked him.

Tony looked like he'd been hit with a bucket of ice water, his entire demeanor changed; he sat up straight in the chair, his eyes were open wide, and his arms were stiff at his sides, like a soldier at attention, and he told Huang in a borderline threatening tone, "No, I don't. I don't date, and I sure as hell don't sleep with anybody. My sex life died when my wife did."

There wasn't any easy way to approach the next question so Huang didn't bother pussyfooting around, "What about when you were in Rikers?"

"What about it?" Tony asked somewhat defensively.

"You were in there for eight years…were you ever involved with one of the other inmates?"

The look on Tony's face changed again and he looked about ready to kill George, and in fact he got to his feet, reached across the table and grabbed Huang by the lapels of his jacket and lifted him to his own feet as he said, "You listen here you little pixie, where the hell do you get off implying that I'm a…"

Huang managed to remain calm as he stated, "A large percentage of men in prison are raped by other inmates…others enter into relationships of sorts as a result of an ongoing need for contact with another human being, it seldom has to do with if the prisoner is gay or straight."

Tony let go of Huang and said, "Well not me…eight years I lasted in that hellhole," he said as he went back to his chair, "None of them pansies ever got a hand on me. I _went_ to prison because I broke three guys' necks, weren't none of them going to screw with me."

"But that didn't stop them from trying, did it?" Huang asked.

"Oh sure they tried, but they didn't get anywhere," Tony responded.

"And did Christopher Sankt try?"

There was a momentary silence, before Tony answered, "He thought since he killed a few kids, that everybody would think he meant business and everybody would be scared of him. He could pull some strings, get away with just about anything, but when he set his sights on me, he was messing with the wrong guy. I was the only one he never got to."

"And now it would seem he's using his brother to hurt you by getting to your daughter," Huang said.

Tony was visibly uneasy now; shifting in his chair, folding and unfolding his arms constantly, looking like he couldn't stay still if his life depended on it. "Toni's never going to forget anything she's been through. Right now she's scared and for the _first_ time in her life, I can't tell her not to be. She keeps saying Bryan Sankt looks like a guy who can afford $20,000 for bail, and if he gets out, she doesn't think he's going to wait for the trial."

"She thinks he'll come after her again?" Huang asked.

Tony looked surprised, "She didn't tell you that?"

"No."

"Well she told the detectives," Tony said, "And the prosecutor."

"Christopher Sankt hasn't had contact with his brother for two years," Huang said, "Do you think he and Bryan have had this planned out that far in advance?"

"No," Tony responded, "The prosecutor said that Chris had all his privileges taken away when they found him trying to get a cell phone smuggled in. I think _then,_ his brother realized Chris was trying to call him to make arrangements, and I think once he found out he couldn't see his brother anymore, or talk to him or write him, it pissed him off so he's decided to handle this whole thing himself. I'm sure on visitor's day, Chris told Bryan all about the one son of a bitch he couldn't break."

* * *

"Huang thinks it would be a good idea to get into Rikers and interview Bryan Sankt, see what's going on with this guy," Cragen told the detectives, "While he's doing that, how are things looking for the first assault case?"

"Well, we haven't had much luck yet figuring out what the connection is between the Nazi gang that jumped Toni the first time and Bryan Sankt," Olivia said, "Other than the fact they're all skinheads, they don't seem to have anything in common."

"They're not friends, they're not neighbors, they're not related," Elliot added, "None of these guys were ever in Rikers so they couldn't have met either one of the Sankt boys there."

"So where does that leave us?" Cragen asked.

"Toni said that Bryan Sankt looks like a guy who would have 20 grand lying around," Olivia said, "It got us thinking, so we're checking his financials _and_ the gang members'."

"I know the lawyer handling the defense in the first case," Casey said, "Larry Trautman, he hasn't been out of law school too long, he's not too cocky yet."

"Think he'll agree to a plea deal?" Elliot asked.

"Yes, but he'll still have to cross-examine Toni when she testifies," Casey said, "That's what I'm worried about."

"Why?" Olivia asked.

Just as Casey opened her mouth to explain, everybody heard somebody coming their way, and the two Kellers appeared in the doorway.

"Dragging my ass out of bed at this time of night," Tony said, "This better be good, Baldy."

"I didn't call you, Tony," Cragen responded.

"Is that so, fat boy?" Tony asked as he got right next to Cragen and poked him in his stomach, going "Ooh—ooh—ooh!" like Mr. Magoo poking a turkey.

"Making fun of my waistline isn't going to get you anywhere, Mr. Keller," Cragen told him.

"I called the two of you out here," Casey told Tony.

"You?" Tony replied.

"What for?" Toni asked.

"Toni, I was going over your testimony for the grand jury, you said that you had been drinking the night of the initial attack," Casey said.

"That's right, you want me to go back and say I didn't?" Toni asked.

"The defense could use that to try and discredit you saying you were drunk that night," Casey said.

Both Kellers started laughing so hard they about fell to the floor.

"I fail to see what's so funny," Casey said.

"She can't get drunk, Miss Novak," Tony said, "She's like me, we Kellers hold our booze very well."

"That's right, and I can prove it," Toni added, "Somebody bring in a breathalyzer. I told you before I had a beer and a half that night, which is just how much I've had tonight before we got the phone call to come down here. If you hadn't interrupted I would've had the better part of a six pack."

Olivia went and got a breathalyzer and had Toni blow into it.

"That's enough," Olivia told her and pulled the gadget away.

"What's it say?" Casey asked.

Olivia looked at it again and shook her head, ".00, like she didn't have anything to drink."

"Told you," Tony said.

"Well then, Mr. Keller, you wouldn't object to taking the test yourself, would you?" Cragen asked, "Have you been drinking tonight too?"

"Yes Mr. Ness," Tony replied in a smartass tone, "Are you going to report me to your superiors at the Prohibition Division?"

"How much?" Casey asked.

"Three beers."

Tony moved back when he saw Olivia coming at him with the breathalyzer, "Hey get that thing away from me, I can't take that, I don't know where it's been."

"Quit jerking us around, Mr. Keller, it was just in your daughter's mouth," Casey said.

Tony looked at his daughter and laughed, "Yeah, and there ain't enough alcohol in beer to sterilize that."

"Just blow," Cragen told Tony.

Olivia stuck the end of it into Tony's mouth just as he tried to get out, "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" and he laughed. He blew and when Olivia pulled it away to read the blood alcohol level, she still couldn't believe it, ".01."

"That's not even enough for impairment to begin," Elliot said, "It would be extremely unorthodox but you could have Toni do it again at the trial."

"Sure, come in to the courtroom loaded, the judge will love that," Casey said.

"Except we have proof she wasn't loaded, now or when she was attacked," Olivia told her, "It can't hurt our case."

"It still could because she's underaged," Casey replied.

"Under whose authority?" Toni replied, defensively, "Miss Novak, by law I am old enough to get married, have sex, get my own place, go to college, buy a shotgun, join the army, fight for this damn country and get blown to bits, you explain to me how the law can still say with a straight face that I'm not old enough to drink."

"That is a case for MADD, not me," Casey told her.

"Then don't bring it up at the trial," Tony said, "It's as simple as that."

Cragen was starting to feel the walls shoving in on them. "Look, it's late, everybody's tired, why don't you two go home and get some sleep?"

"Fine with me," Tony said, "I didn't want to come down here in the first place anyway."

After they had left, Casey told the detectives, "If it were possible to keep her off the stand, I would."

"Why?" Elliot asked, "She holds up better than most victims, she doesn't get emotional, she sticks to the facts, she tells it like it is, and she's always accurate. What more could you want?"

"Her credibility is still shaky," Casey said, "She tried to kill herself."

"Yeah, two years ago, when her father was in Rikers and she was committed to an insane asylum because she had just killed her attacker, and she didn't see her life as getting any better," Olivia said.

"Except the jury will never hear that side of it, especially not from Sankt's lawyer," Casey said.

"As long as Toni's on the stand, they'll hear exactly what they need to hear to convict," Elliot said.

"You're placing a lot of faith in this girl's ability to testify," Casey warned him.

"I know," Elliot said, "And I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't know she could deliver at trial. I know her, alright? When I first met her she didn't tell _anybody_ anything about the abuse she'd been put through. The fact that now she is only too willing to tell us everything to make sure the right people go to jail, that's all the assurance I need."

"I wish I could be as optimistic about it as you," Casey told him.

"It gets easier after you've known her a while," he explained.


	6. Chapter 6

"We checked Sankt's financials, turns out that he has been making some large withdrawals lately…one week before Toni was attacked the first time, he withdrew $20,000," Olivia said.

"Where'd he get that money from?" Cragen asked.

"Bryan's been living on a nifty little inheritance his father left him when he died three years back," Munch explained, "It was supposed to be split between the two sons but with Chris in jail for life, everything went to Bryan."

"So Toni was right," Elliot said, "She said Bryan looked like a guy who could afford that much, and there seems to be more where that came from," Elliot said, "So why hasn't he posted bail yet?"

"I don't know," Olivia said.

"So if he paid the gang to attack Toni, why isn't Casey trying them together?" Cragen asked.

"There's no real evidence to it," Elliot said, "Those guys' financials don't show a $20,000 increase, there's no forensic evidence tying Sankt to her second attack…she's hoping to get one of the Nazis to roll on him, which isn't looking too easy."

"So, Toni's going to testify to the grand jury in a few days for the first attack," Olivia said, "And then the week after that for the second attack."

"Let's just hope something else doesn't happen to her before then," Cragen told them.

"That might just happen," Huang said as he entered the room.

"What do you mean?" Cragen asked.

"I just got back from seeing Bryan Sankt, if he does make bail, you need to get Toni into protective custody," Huang said.

"I thought you said he wouldn't kill her," Elliot said.

"Diagnosing somebody without even seeing them is a bit different than sitting down with them in person and trying to find out what's going through their mind," Huang said, "When Toni refused to perform oral sex on him, it set off a violent reaction in him, and it would seem it hasn't left him yet."

"A rapist whose fury escalades when his victims fight back," Munch said, "Being a victim is a catch-22, if they fight back they might be killed, and if they don't fight back they could still be killed, and even if they live, it's their fault they didn't do anything. It'd be easier if the law just permitted everybody to carry a gun when they went out."

"Are you serious?" Fin asked.

"When I go home at night, if somebody tries to carjack me or mug me, I have a right to shoot them and call it self defense. If I didn't wear a badge would I be any less entitled to that right to protect myself from the scourge of the earth that's out in the streets? You used to work narcotics, you don't know, I was in homicide, saw a lot of people dead who would have still been alive if they had fought back, and several of them didn't fight back because they truly believed the police would always be there to protect them."

"The last thing we need is a city full of vigilantes," Fin said.

"The courts have ruled that police have absolutely _no_ obligation to protect individuals. Meaning if a cop doesn't want to protect somebody, they don't have to, they don't go out on call, and somebody gets killed, and it's not the cop's fault for never showing up," Munch said, "People know this, so why should they be expected to just stand around waiting for the police to come save them from the criminals?"

Cragen picked up the telephone off a desk and hit it against a metal filing cabinet, making a high pitched sound that ricocheted, "That's the end of that round," he told them, "Do you really think Sankt will kill her if he gets out?"

"He's certainly determined enough," Huang said, "In a way it makes sense, he kills her, he's not too concerned anymore about being caught, he'd be sent to Rikers for life where his brother is."

"Yeah, but he'd never see Chris," Elliot said.

"Maybe not, but they'd be a hell of a lot closer than they are now," Olivia said.

"So what do we do?" Elliot asked.

* * *

"Miss Keller, will you tell the jury what happened on the night in question?" Casey said when the case finally went to trial.

Toni looked around the room, she saw the jury, and she saw Bryan Sankt who had made bail a couple weeks ago and the police had been tailing ever since, and she saw the detectives, and she explained, "I was at the library until about eight, one of the librarians said I had a call. I picked up the phone and it was my father, the police had called him saying that they had arrested eight guys who they thought were responsible for the first beating I took. They needed me to come down and identify them. My father said he'd come and get me but I told him not to bother, I'd just walk over."

"Why?" Casey asked.

"Well I was still walking funny but my legs weren't exactly broken," Toni answered.

"I mean why did you walk from the library to the police station unescorted?"

"They said they had the guys locked up…what did I have to worry about?" Toni asked, "I don't think there's any way they could have grabbed eight wrong people. Anyway, I was on my way over and I got onto 97th Street…that's when this guy came up and he started beating on me."

"What exactly did he do?" Casey asked.

"I can't remember what order everything happened in, but he beat me and punched me and kicked me and he hit me in the throat, he hit me in the face, he grabbed my hands and squeezed them so hard they about broke. He punched me in the jaw and grabbed a handful of my hair and tore it out, all by the roots. Then he started to push me down onto my knees and he told me to blow him, and he said I better do a good job of it, otherwise he'd rip me into two. But I wouldn't, I fought back, and he started beating me until I couldn't move, then he left. A while after that, I got up, I forced myself to get up and I made it out to the corner and saw a police car. I flagged them down and collapsed in the street. It was the car Detectives Munch and Tutuola were driving. They took me to the hospital where I stayed for several days, unable to walk, feed myself, grab anything with my hands, or even talk, because everything I had was swollen so bad from the beating," Toni explained.

"And do you see the man who attacked you, in this courtroom today?" Casey asked.

"Yes," Toni nodded, and pointed, "Bryan Sankt, right over there."

"Thank you," Casey said, and went over to her table.

James Dobson got up and went over to Toni and said, "Miss Keller, how did you know it was Bryan Sankt who attacked you?"

"I saw him, a face like that you don't forget," Toni said, "Especially when he's trying to kill you."

"Wasn't it dark on 97th Street?"

"Not that dark," Toni insisted, "There were lights all over the place."

"Miss Keller, two years ago, were you or were you not institutionalized in Bellevue Psychiatric hospital?" he asked her.

"Objection," Casey got up, "Relevance."

"Goes to the victim's state of mind," Dobson replied.

"Sustained," the judge said.

"Not willingly," Toni answered.

There were a few slight chuckles from the spectators.

"But you were committed?"

"Yes, psychiatrists revealed I had suffered a nervous breakdown around the time that I broke the neck of Tobias Wentworth, a recently released killer whose latest murder trial I was testifying at. Mr. Wentworth during the court's recess, dragged me into the men's bathroom and started to tear my clothes off and told me he was going to rape me, I fought back and in the process, broke his neck. The doctors called that experience an extreme emotional disturbance, which I recovered from shortly afterward."

"But not before you tried to kill yourself."

"Objection," Casey said.

"Did you or did you not attempt to commit suicide while in Bellevue?" Dobson asked.

"Yes," Toni said, "I obtained a folding knife which I stuck into the mattress of my bed and I impaled myself on it so that the blade buried into my back. I managed to avoid all major organs and arteries fortunately…my mother died when I was little, my father had been in prison since I was nine, and I also had been raped by countless people since I was nine, people including the foster homes the state had sent me to. I was living on the streets, no education, no money, no food, barely any clothes, then Tobias Wentworth cut up my face with a dirty knife because I saw him kill a man." She traced her fingers along her cheek and said, "I don't know if the people in the jury box can see it from where they are, but about a year ago I managed to find a doctor who was able to perform some reconstructive work on it. At the time it was very painful and miserable and deforming, but I would've let the court handle him for just that. But then he tried to rape me, so I killed him…now, I'm sure you can't understand because if we're to believe what we read in the papers, you've always had a rather upper crust life, Mr. Dobson. However if you can imagine having nobody to turn to, nowhere to live, nothing to eat and being abused for half your life…then spending the rest of your days locked in the loony bin doesn't have much appeal over death, does it? The doctors who examined me post-attempt found that I was not suffering from any form of mental illness, so you can't say my word isn't trustworthy because I'm crazy."

Dobson appeared to be beaten, but he came back and said, "You testified that my client attacked you on September 15th of this year..."

"No, I didn't," Toni said.

Nobody saw that one coming. All eyes were on her now, wondering what the hell was going on.

Dobson was starting to look confident again and a knowing smirk formed on his lips, "You didn't?"

"I said nothing of the sort," Toni insisted.

"Are you sure?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Then how do you explain only moments ago testifying that on the night of September 15th, that my client attacked you?"

"Because he attacked me on September _14__th_, on September 15th I was already in the hospital because of what he'd done to me," Toni explained.

* * *

"I'm going to be second guessing everything I say in court until I retire," Casey said.

"Does what Toni said help or hurt the case?" Olivia asked.

"She's shifting the guess about her own credibility to the defense's," Casey said.

"Well he only missed it by one day," Elliot said, "That's an honest mistake."

"One that nobody in this courthouse has ever made before," Casey said, "At least none that I've seen. She's good."

"I told you," Elliot said.

As they headed through the hall, they saw Toni and her father heading their way.

"So how'd she do?" Tony asked.

"It was a perfect testimony," Casey said, "I think we have a good chance of nailing him. You'll be called up as a witness tomorrow, Mr. Keller."

"No problem, I already figured out what I'm going to say," Tony told her.

"You're doing well, Toni," Olivia told her, "How're you feeling?"

"I feel like…I feel like," the look on her face changed as she answered, "I feel like I'm going to piss myself, excuse me," and she went to find the ladies room.

Olivia looked to Tony and told him, "You've _got_ to get her back to see a doctor."

"I know," Tony replied, "I will, it's just that she hasn't wanted to leave the house lately for anything, the only thing she's been looking forward to is coming down here and testifying."

"Sankt's out on bail now," Casey said, "Let's just hope nothing happens to her."

* * *

Elliot was having a nice dream for the first time in weeks when it was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. Forcing his eyes open and seeing the darkness of the bedroom, he picked up the phone, hit the talk button and said, "Stabler…"

It was Tony in a panic because Toni was gone. Elliot felt his eyes fly open, "What do you mean gone?"

"I fell asleep earlier, and when I woke up she was gone," Tony said, "I checked her room, I checked the whole house and outside, she's not here."

"Don't panic," Elliot said, "I'll find out if anything's changed with Sankt, we'll get men out to look for her, just don't do anything stupid."

He disconnected the call and started to get dressed. A few minutes later his phone rang again.

"Stabler."

"Elliot!"

It was Toni, and she sounded scared, it rattled Elliot because that was one thing he never heard from her as long as he'd known her.

"Toni, what's going on?" Elliot forced himself to be calm hoping it would rub off on her, "Where are you?"

"I'm in an empty building over on 69th Street, it's a red building with busted windows and it's about five stories tall. Elliot you've got to get over here, he's here."

"Sankt?"

"I went out for a walk, and this car came up and he pulled me inside and drove off…we wound up here…I got away but he's looking for me, this time he's really trying to kill me, and if you don't get down here soon, _one_ of us _will_ be dead."

"Stay where you are, I'm on my way," Elliot told her, praying he'd get there in time.

He called for backup as he headed out to his car and as he drove off, he called Tony and told him where Toni was.

By the time he got to the building in question on 69th Street he saw the reinforcements had beaten him there. There must've been about 20 police cars all with the lights flashing. As he got out of the car he saw Cragen and Munch and several others. The car headlights were shining on the building and as Elliot got close to the front, they heard a noise from inside. A few seconds later, Toni ran out the front door with Bryan Sankt right behind her. He grabbed her and threw her down on the concrete and she didn't move, he pulled what Elliot saw to be a gun, out of his back pocket and started to point it at Toni.

"Sankt!" Elliot hollered as he drew his gun and held it on the man, "Let her go, this is the end of the line."

Bryan looked up and through the blinding lights he seemed to distinctly make out which one was Elliot. He had an evil smirk on his face as he said, "You think so, detective?"

Toni started to move again and tried to get away, but Bryan stomped his steel toed boot into her back, causing her to scream and moan in agony.

"Let her go," Elliot told him again, "You're never going to get away with this."

Bryan started to reach for the trigger but Elliot beat him to it, he fired five rounds into Sankt's chest and he fell to the ground. Elliot went over to Toni to see if she was alright, she had her hand up against her eyes and called out to the rest of the police, "Shut off the fucking lights!"

"Kill them!" Munch told the officers.

The lights went off and Toni looked over at Sankt, lying on the ground with holes in his chest and blood pouring out of him, "Is he dead?" she asked, "Is he dead?"

* * *

"Bryan Sankt died 20 minutes ago on his way to the prison hospital," Olivia told Elliot as they headed through the hospital lobby again, "Good shooting, El."

"He would've shot her, I know it," Elliot said, "He was so far gone he didn't give a damn if he killed her in plain eye view of 20 policemen."

They reached the elevator just as it came back down, the doors opened and Munch stepped out, asking in his smartass tone, "Going up?"

"How's Toni?" Elliot asked.

"Got some bruises on her back but she'll live," he said, "This is the least severe trip to the hospital for her this month."

Olivia and Elliot headed up to the new room she'd been assigned to, when they reached the right numbered door, Elliot turned to Olivia and said, "Coming with me?"

"I'll wait," Olivia said.

Elliot headed in and immediately saw the bed was empty, however it had had somebody in it. He heard the bathroom door open and saw Toni stagger out in another paper gown.

"I'm getting tired of coming back to this place," she said as she made it over to the bed and collapsed on her sore back.

"How're you doing?" Elliot asked.

"Alright, I got a few bruises, and tomorrow I gotta see a doctor about my apparent bladder infection," Toni said, she saw the look on Elliot's face and added, "Don't look so worried, these things they just give you antibiotics and after three days it's gone."

"Sankt's dead," Elliot told her.

She paused for a minute after hearing those words before replying, "Good…he would've killed me tonight you know."

"I know," Elliot said, "But he's gone now, and the D.A. says Trautman's willing to take a plea meaning you won't have to go back to court."

"Good," Toni said as she laid out on the bed, "You know Elliot, I was thinking, I need to get out of New York…I'm getting too old for this kind of shit to be happening all the time…and if _I'm_ too old to be going through this, my father is definitely too old to have to go through it with me."

She swung her feet around to the floor and said, "Now I have to go to the bathroom again."

"Well, I'll see you later," Elliot said as he got up to leave, "Hope you feel better."

"Thanks."

Elliot left and walked into Tony who was on his way in.

"Olivia said the bastard's dead, is that true?" Tony asked.

"Yeah," Elliot answered, "I'm sorry about what happened to Toni."

"At least it can't happen again," Tony replied, "Thanks, Elliot."

Tony headed into the hospital room and closed the door behind him.

"Is Elliot gone?" Toni asked from the bathroom.

"Yeah, he's gone."

The bathroom door opened again and she came back out, "Oh boy what a night."

"Yep," Tony replied as he sat down at the foot of her bed.

"But it's over now."

"Yep, it is," he said.

"Oh God," Toni's nonchalant exterior broke and she collapsed in her father's arms finally letting out the distress and anxiety that had been in her all night, "I was so scared."

Tony wrapped one arm around his daughter's head and the other around her back and held her close to him as he told her, "I know, so was I…but it's over now."

* * *

Elliot went by the Kellers' house two days later only to find there wasn't anybody there. The car was gone and the house was empty save for the furniture. The door was unlocked and he went inside: the phones had been unplugged, the refrigerator had been cleaned out, their closets were empty, Toni's electronic typewriter was gone and so were several of her books.

"They cleared out this morning," Olivia said.

Elliot turned around and wondered where she'd come from and how long she'd been there.

"Tony called me earlier," she explained, "He said to let you know so you wouldn't worry."

"Toni told me they'd be getting out of New York again," Elliot said, "I just didn't think it'd be this soon."

"She'll be back, Elliot," Olivia told him, "She'll come back eventually."

"I hope so," Elliot said.

* * *

6 months later—

Olivia stretched back in her chair and yawned and when she opened her eyes she saw Elliot coming back into the precinct.

"Where've you been?" she asked.

"Out on a call," Elliot said.

"What was it?"

"Weenie wagger," Elliot answered with a bit of a laugh.

"He got out of Bellevue?" Olivia asked.

"No, it was a different one," Elliot said.

Olivia made a disgusted sound and said, "I'll never get how some people can enjoy running around in public exposing everything to everyone they pass."

"Oh that's right," Munch said, "You would've been too young to enjoy the streaking craze of the 70's."

"Don't tell me you were into that weird stuff," Fin said.

"Me? No, I sunburn easily," Munch replied.

Olivia laughed tiredly and said to Elliot, "Do you believe these guys?"

"I try not to," he replied.

His cell phone rang, he took it out and answered, "Stabler."

"Elliot!"

It was his wife.

"Kathy, what's wrong?" Elliot asked.

Kathy sounded hysterical. "It's Kathleen, she never came home from school today."

"What!"

* * *

Elliot went to Kathleen's school and spoke with a teacher who saw her leave, but nobody knew where she went. A few of the students said that they had seen her leave with somebody but they didn't know if it was a man or a woman, and nobody knew where Kathleen went.

"Oh my God," he said to himself, "What am I going to do?"

Olivia had gone with Elliot to make sure he didn't do anything drastic, "She's got to be around here somewhere, Elliot."

"Not one of my kids has ever been missing for more than a few minutes and that was when I took Dickie to the park years ago," Elliot said, "If something's happened to her…"

Olivia spotted something out the window, "Elliot, stop."

He slammed on the brake, "What is it?"

"At that playground over there, there're two people on the climbing dome," Olivia said, "One of them looks like Kathleen."

Elliot didn't take much time to look and see what Olivia was seeing. He threw open the car door and took off running to the two figures up on the geodome.

"Kathleen!" he called.

He bumped into the legs of the two people sitting on the top and he was surrounded by falling sheets of paper.

"Hi, Daddy!" Kathleen said.

Elliot looked up and saw his daughter, perfectly unharmed and appearing to be having a good time, and he looked to the other person up there with her and saw…

"Way to go, Elliot," Toni said, "You just ruined my manuscript."

"Toni?" he said, dumbstruck, "What are you doing here?"


	7. Chapter 7

"Sorry to worry you, Elliot," Toni said, "I saw Kathleen coming out of school and I went up to her and introduced myself."

Elliot had Olivia take Kathleen home and he took Toni back to the precinct with him so he could talk to her while he got back to work. It seemed a suiting environment because their discussion was becoming more like an interrogation.

"There are 900 kids at her school, how did you know which one was her?" Elliot asked.

"I saw her picture on your desk last time I was in town, I have a funny memory, I can see some things once and never forget them," Toni answered, "I told her I knew you, we left and…the ice broke, that's all there is to it."

It wasn't that Elliot wasn't relieved that Kathleen was alright but it only heightened his paranoia that just about anybody could walk up to his kid, say they knew him, and she'd blindly go off with them.

"Why're you back in town?" Elliot asked.

"Well it's not exactly like we're the freaks in a carnival sideshow, we _do_ have roots put down here," Toni told him, "We do own that house we were living in you know…I like Kathleen," she added, "She's nice."

Elliot didn't know why, but he stood there looking at Toni and remembering what Munch had said several months ago, about the possibility that Toni might be a lesbian. That was a thought he couldn't push out of his mind quickly enough.

They entered the main room which was abuzz with ringing phones and people talking, it looked like nothing had changed since the last time Toni was there.

"Well look who's back," Fin said as he looked up from his desk.

"Yes," Toni said, gesturing to Elliot, "Every time I think I'm rid of him, I turn around and he's still there like a wart."

"So how was Vegas?" Munch asked.

"I still couldn't get into the casino, so that sucked," Toni answered, "But the next morning we were $60,000 up so it evens out."

Elliot looked at Munch, "How did you know they were in Vegas?"

"That's like asking how you know a pig likes mud," Toni said, "Anytime we get a chance to go to Vegas, we go, because my father knows the tables and he knows how to win…he was never good at a regular job so this is how he makes his income."

Elliot looked up and saw Huang pass by the squad room. He told Toni he'd be back in a minute and slipped out to catch up with the doctor.

"How's it going?" Elliot asked.

"In one week I've had to examine one case of dissociative personality disorder, two bi-polar cases, and one schizotypal…" Huang looked at Elliot and could tell that that wasn't what he wanted to know, "What's going on?"

"Toni's back in town and I was wondering something," Elliot said.

"What?"

"You saw her and her father, how would you describe their relationship?"

Huang sighed and answered, "A close one."

"How close?" Elliot asked.

Huang turned to look at him, "What do you mean?"

"I mean how close does it take to get too close?" Elliot asked.

"A bit more than you would think. Our culture has become a very paranoid one. Western society has dictated in recent times that anytime two people become intimate or affectionate in any way, it has to be a sexual relationship. Which is why many fathers don't show affection towards their sons or when their daughters reach a certain age and their bodies develop, they quit paying as much attention to them as they used to."

"Because they don't want to be accused of incest," Elliot finished the thought, "But I don't get it, nobody says when two women kiss each other that they're lesbians, but you'll never catch two guys doing it because they're automatically written off as gay."

"It's what I and a few of my colleagues refer to as the new Dark Age," Huang said.

"But what about Toni and her father?"

"Tony was the sole caregiver after his wife died, he spent six years trying to raise his daughter alone. Then they were separated for eight years when he went to prison. Since they were close before his arrest, naturally the two banded together once again when he was released."

"Is it normal though?" Elliot asked, "To the extent of how close they are?"

"Normal is a word subject to interpretation," Huang said, "Since each person is classified as an individual, there're no exact rules for any two people, so in reality normal is a word with no meaning. Healthy would be the term you're looking for."

"Okay so is it healthy?" Elliot asked.

"Toni got thrown into a world she had to control by herself at an early age, she was forced into independence and has the ability to cope with the world on her own if she has to, but she chooses not to. She stays close to home, she doesn't date, he doesn't date, but that has nothing to do with them being apart from each other. Toni spent several years sleeping with anybody who had something to offer, in the process she stayed several times with most of them and got a good idea of what they were like. Now that she's old enough to legally enter a relationship she's decided she doesn't want any part of it."

"What about her father?" Elliot asked.

"Tony Keller seems to think entering a new relationship now would be like cheating on his wife, even though she's been dead for almost 17 years."

"Yeah well I think he might be starting to get over that thought," Elliot muttered.

"Why?"

Elliot realized he'd actually said what he'd been thinking and he disregarded it, "No reason…but is it healthy for the two of them to be together as much as they are?"

"Based on what I've seen of both of them, yes I'd say so," Huang told him.

"Alright, I just have one more question," Elliot said.

"What?"

Elliot stopped and for a minute he seemed he wasn't able to talk, then he finally got out what was on his mind. "How has this kid been through so much crap and she hasn't intentionally murdered anyone yet?"

"I don't know," Huang answered.

* * *

"Is this the same girl you were telling me about two years ago?" Kathy asked Elliot when he came home that night and they sat down to dinner, alone because their kids were all visiting their friends.

"Yeah, it's the same one," he answered, "It's weird, the last couple of years she's been through so much, I just can't believe it's the same one I met all those years ago."

"Hmm," Kathy said teasingly, "Maybe I should be getting worried. It sounds like you're really interested in her."

Elliot looked at her and said, good-naturedly, "Maybe you ought to talk to the FBI's psychiatrist."

Kathy ignored his comment and said, "But what's her father like?"

"Ah, now there's a guy that makes me glad you're already married to me," Elliot told her, "I don't _think_ you'd be interested in him, but you never know."

"Is he anything like you?" Kathy asked.

"Nothing," Elliot said, "He goes away to Vegas all the time, wins more money than we'll ever see in a year, drinks like a fish and has a smartass answer for everything. But I'll tell you, he sure loves his daughter."

"Sounds like you might be worried," Kathy said.

"Me? Worried about what?" Elliot asked.

Kathy shrugged and said, "Just sounds like maybe you're worried about not spending enough time with your own kids."

There was a momentary pause before Elliot replied, "I wonder sometimes…half the time I don't have any idea who they even are anymore…but that's what happens when you work the hours I do. And it's not that I _like_ the job, nobody can _like_ working cases that involve rapists and pedophiles all the time…but I'm good at it, and I want to see these guys put away, so I can't quit the job either."

"You're a good father, Elliot," Kathy told him, "You're better than most."

"Well that makes me feel a lot better," he said dryly, "These days it takes very little to be better than most. I know, I see what most of them are."

* * *

On Elliot's day off, he told Kathy that he needed to run some reports over to his partner for one of their latest cases; but that was a complete lie. He called Olivia on his cell phone and told her that he was taking Kathleen to her dentist appointment; that was a falsity in every sense of the word as well. He paid a brief visit to a shop in upper Manhattan and then headed out to the current residence of the Kellers.

Elliot headed up to the door with a package tucked under one arm and he saw the main door was open; just the screen door separated him from the inside. Peering in through the window, he saw Toni and Tony in the dining room. Elliot beat on the glass a couple of times and Tony came to the door.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"No, can I come in?" Elliot asked.

Tony didn't say yes and he didn't say no; he just turned around and nodded his head towards the dining room.

Elliot saw Toni sitting at the table with a couple other packages behind her.

"Hey Elliot, what happened, you get lost?" she asked.

"No, I just came by to drop this off," he handed her the package, "It _is_ today, right?"

"Yep, 20 years old and I ain't dead yet, so I must be doing something right," Toni answered, and started pulling the ribbons off her present.

"Hey," Tony said to her, "What do you say?"

"I'll wait and see what I got before I say anything," Toni responded.

"That's right," Tony said.

Toni wasted no time in shredding the paper off the package and finding out what it was she got, and she clearly wasn't disappointed; a new Alfred Hitchcock book with 63 stories of mystery and suspense in it.

"I was hoping it's one you don't already have," Elliot said.

Toni kept the heavy bastard of a present in her grip as she got up from the chair and thanked Elliot with a one-armed embrace as she said, "This is great, it…" and then her whole demeanor changed and she looked up at Elliot, "Oh no, I'm gonna die, if you're being nice to me then I'm going to die. What's going on?"

"Nothing," Elliot was a bit surprised that for being as normal as she was, Toni could take such a defensive response to getting a birthday present, "The last two years you guys took off for whereabouts unknown before I could get you anything. I figured I'd better make sure you didn't disappear into the night again before I got here."

Toni looked at her gift again as if to make sure it was real, and not a bomb about to explode in her face, "This is great, Elliot, thanks."

"Hey Elliot," Tony said, "While you're here, do you know anything about plumbing?"

That wasn't a question he had expected to hear, "A little."

"Oh good because the kitchen sink's been doing some ugly stuff lately," Tony said, "Why don't you see what you think?"

"Well as long as a turtle didn't go down the garbage disposal," Elliot said, "I should be able to help you out."

The two men left Toni in the dining room, engrossed in her present as the two men went over to the kitchen sink.

"I'm not seeing anything wrong with it so far," Elliot said.

"That's because there's nothing wrong with it," Tony said quietly, so his daughter wouldn't hear them, "I need to ask you a favor."

"Me?" Elliot couldn't hide the surprise, "Hell must be freezing over."

"Elliot, in a few days I need to go out of town and I can't take Toni with me," Tony started to explain.

The way Tony talked, it sounded like he'd been issued a death sentence, "What is it?" Elliot asked.

"I'm getting out of town, and out of state, to see a doctor about some tests," Tony said, "Most likely it's nothing but I don't want Toni to worry, so she can't come with me. Now, I know by law she's an adult but I'd feel better about leaving her here if she wasn't alone."

Elliot was starting to get the picture, but he wasn't sure he liked it, "You want me to bring her home with me?"

"I told her that one thing I've always wanted to do is go out to Illinois and see Al Capone's grave, you laugh and I'll kill you," Tony warned him, "She don't want to go, thank God…anyway, I figure it'll be a lot more convincing if I'm gone about two weeks, so I'm going to go to Minnesota, have the tests done, probably be done in a week, spend the other week in a motel somewhere and kill time, then I'll be back."

"Wait a minute," Elliot said, "The Mayo Clinic is in Minnesota, what's wrong with you?"

"Probably nothing, but you know the medical care in prison is far below par, hell, I was there for eight years they never even knew I had ulcers. After Marissa got sick and died on me, I figured I wouldn't take the same chances with Toni around. If that ever happened, you know how she'd feel about having her old man drop dead on her in the prime of her life, she'd never get over that. So I'll go, I get the tests, I'll be gone for two weeks, and then I'll come back. I want to make sure everything is checked and I don't want Toni to know it, that's why I'm not going to anybody around here. You know as well as I do, to hell with doctor/patient confidentiality, those records become public knowledge in a heartbeat."

Elliot started to laugh and said, "You and Munch really ought to get together sometime, you'd get along great."

Tony wasn't about to let him get off subject, "Will you do it?"

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Elliot said, "But yeah…I'll figure out something to tell Kathy."

"Thanks, I appreciate it."

"That seems to be the running theme in your family," Elliot said.

* * *

"You what?" Kathy was more than a bit surprised when Elliot finally got around to telling her the news.

"Look, Kathy, the guy doesn't want his daughter to freak out that he's going to a clinic for tests…and she and Kathleen get along great and I'm sure Dickie and Elizabeth would like her too, and you were saying you wanted to see what she was like for yourself. He'll be gone about a week, maybe more, Toni can take Maureen's bed since she's off at college, worst case scenario we can put her on the couch, but I told Tony I'd help him…I kind of screwed the guy over a long time ago and I just want to make sure that doesn't happen again."

"Well…I don't know," Kathy said.

"Toni's 20 years old, she's an adult, she's responsible," Elliot told her, "Look, she's not in school, and she doesn't have a job so she wouldn't have to go anywhere, she could help you around the house while the kids are in school."

"I can't believe I'm actually doing this," Kathy told him, "But…alright, if you think it's the best thing to do, she can stay with us for a while."

"Good," Elliot said, "Because otherwise I'd have to be dropping in over there every day and reporting back to Tony every day so _he_ wouldn't worry."

"When is she coming?" Kathy asked.

"I pick her up the day after tomorrow."

* * *

For being only spring, New York was hit with a heat wave the day Elliot went to get Toni. He got out of the car and headed up to the front porch where Tony stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

"Toni ready to go yet?" Elliot asked.

"She'll be down in a minute," Tony answered, "So, you really pulled this off, huh?"

"Well Kathy wasn't exactly thrilled about it," Elliot said, "But, yeah I think so."

They heard Toni coming down the stairs and saw her come out the front door hauling two large suitcases and wearing a one piece orange swimsuit.

"Wait a minute," Tony stopped her before she headed down the steps.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"You look like an orange phosphate, that's what," her father told her, "What happened to the little blue, uh," the word escaped him momentarily, "Bikini, you looked good in that one."

"That thing was cut too low on the top and too high on the bottom," Toni answered, "Everything showed in it."

Tony disregarded her statement, "You're like your mother, you can wear anything. Now…" he reached over and grabbed at a few strands of her hair and straightened them out, "Are you going to behave yourself at Elliot's house while I'm gone?"

"No," Toni answered.

"Good," her father said as he let go of her hair, "Give him hell."

Elliot didn't appreciate the joke. He got Toni's stuff loaded up in his car and with a final goodbye to her father; she was on her way to Queens with him. It was only now that Elliot was starting to have second thoughts about this whole thing. Oh he was sure Toni would get along with his wife and kids, but he still couldn't shake a bad feeling he had about the whole thing.


	8. Chapter 8

"So how's it going with Toni staying with you?" Olivia asked Elliot when he came into work the next morning.

"So far it's pretty painless," Elliot said, "Toni's sharing a room with Kathleen, Dickie and Elizabeth seem to like her and she seems to get along really well with Kathy."

"That's good," Olivia replied.

Elliot took off his jacket and asked, "So what's up this morning?"

Before Olivia could answer, they heard Fin's voice carrying from down the hall. He stormed into the squad room and the first thing he said was, "That's it, I need a new partner."

"What's going on?" Cragen asked.

Munch came in behind Fin holding a bloody Kleenex to his nose.

"What happened?" Olivia asked.

"I can't take it anymore, Captain," Fin said, "This guy's about to drive me nuts. The whole ride in he's had a nosebleed and he's been blowing it the whole time!"

"I do _not_ have a nosebleed," Munch insisted, "I have a blood clot stuck up my nose I'm trying to get out, and the only way to do that _is_ to blow it out."

Fin turned to Cragen and said, "Can I shoot him now?"

"No."

"Please?"

"No, paperwork on it would be murder, it wouldn't be worth the trouble," Cragen told him.

Munch blew his nose again and this time managed to get out something that looked like a leech. "Aha! Got it."

Fin looked back at Cragen and said, "You sure?"

* * *

The day was an unusually slow one for SVU, an hour went by with hardly anybody calling in. Elliot looked behind him and saw Olivia was reading a stack of papers stapled together. "What's that, a new report?"

"No, one of Toni's stories that she's sending in to a magazine," Olivia said.

"What?"

"You didn't know?" Olivia asked.

"Know what?" Elliot asked.

"Your houseguest is a published author," Munch said as he entered the squad room waving around a magazine, "A new magazine came out a while back, _The Coast to Coast Opinion_, her short stories have been popping up in every monthly issue."

"That's a magazine marketed towards the younger crowd," Olivia noted, "What're you doing with it?"

"Mind your own business," Munch told her as he sat down, and said to Elliot, "She can hit the nail on the head."

"What's the magazine about?" Elliot asked.

"Anything and everything," Munch said, "Articles, observations, opinions, stories, reports, you name it. Here's one from a couple of months ago, she observed 'Ever notice how in adult movies, women's bodies are almost always either perfectly bronze or fair, and yet almost every guy you see tanned up everything except his big, pale ass? Did they forget that the camera loves shots from the rear?'"

"She gets paid for that?" Elliot asked.

"Well she has deeper stuff than that," Munch commented.

"And more disturbing," Olivia added, "I've been reading one short story she wrote where two high school kids have sex in a cemetery, and then take a blood oath that neither will tell anyone else about it, and if either one _does_ tell, they have to die for it."

"Well, that's one way to make sure he doesn't brag about it to his buddies," Munch noted.

"I don't even know why I bother coming back to this place," Elliot said, "In between rapes, kidnapping and child porn, I get to listen to the intellectual psychobabble of one of the biggest bags of hot air in New York."

"Yes but you love me anyway," Munch cynically replied, "Admit it."

* * *

"Three victims," the first officer at the scene told the detectives, "High school kids, all shot point blank in the chests, each one killed with just one bullet."

"Well that's horrible, but what's that got to do with us?" Elliot asked.

Melinda raised the sheet on one of the victims, a teenaged girl whose body was bloody and bruised. "This one was sexually assaulted…bite marks on her breasts, vaginal tearing, fingernail marks digging deep into her inner thigh. Both of the guys have her blood on their hands and their clothes."

"So what're we thinking?" Olivia asked, "Somebody watches the attack and then kills them all?"

"What time did it happen?" Munch asked.

"Call came in at 8:01," the cop told him.

Munch's whole body twisted and contorted as he let out a disgruntled, "Dammit, not again."

"What do you mean again?" Fin asked him.

"I worked a case like this back in Baltimore when I was in homicide," Munch said, "The sniper attack of '96. Oh, it wasn't like _this_," he waved his hand towards the violated girl, "But three people shot point blank from some nut on a rooftop with a high powered rifle, every eight hours on the hour he'd kill three more people."

"He blew his own brains out, didn't he?" Olivia asked.

"Yes he did," John answered, "But then there was a copycat."

"So…what?" Elliot asked, "About 20 years later we have a copycat of a copycat or something?"

"I don't know," Munch replied, "And I hope we don't have to find out."

"First thing we need to do is figure out who these three are," Olivia said, "We need to find out who their parents are, and break the bad news to them and try to figure out if there's anybody who'd want them dead."

"I don't think that'd be too hard for two of them," Elliot said, looking at the blood on the boys' hands.

* * *

"Is there some kind of new epidemic going on around here?" Fin asked Munch as they drove through the city later that day, "Is there some kind of new disease where one person sneezes and 10 more turn into killers?"

"That is exactly what my old partner said," Munch said.

Fin looked at him, "Monique?"

"No," Munch replied, "Stan Bolander from homicide, the Big Man."

"Oh," Fin said, in a tone that clearly said he'd already lost interest.

"Good ol' Stan," Munch said, obviously deep in nostalgia for the people he used to work with, "Damn, I miss him."

"Yeah, right now I'm wishing you were back with him too," Fin commented.

A report came in on the police radio for all available cars to report to a shooting at a high school nearby. John listened to the name of the school and said, "Isn't that where Elliot's kids go?"

"I don't know," Fin replied, "But it would seem you were wrong about a copycat."

"Somehow that doesn't make me feel better," Munch told him.

They raced to the school and by the time they arrived, about 10 other cars were there, Elliot's included. It also looked like the entire student body had managed to get out, but they knew that would've been too easy.

"This isn't going to end well," Munch said as they strapped on bulletproof vests.

"You just figure that out?" Fin asked him.

Elliot got out of his car and ran up to the police block; a uniformed cop stopped him and told him he couldn't get through.

"Detective Stabler, Manhattan SVU, my daughter is in there!" Elliot told the guy.

"Daddy!"

Elliot looked and saw Kathleen, her hair and clothes a bit messed up but otherwise she appeared to be okay, pushing past other hysterical students and over towards her father.

"Kathleen are you okay?" Elliot asked.

He could hear the jitters in her voice but she nodded her head and got out a near hyperventilated, "Yes."

"What happened?" Elliot asked.

"I don't know!" Kathleen was near tears, "These two guys came in, all dressed in black and they just started shooting."

"How'd you get out?"

"She was there, Dad…she was there."

"Who?" Elliot asked.

"Toni," Kathleen answered, "She came with me today, and then she left…and when the shooting started she ran into the school. She…she broke a window and pushed me out, but she's still in there!"

"Are you sure?" Elliot asked.

"Yes."

Fin and Munch headed in with several other cops. The shooting had ceased a short while ago but nobody knew if it was because the gunmen had run out of ammo, or if they were dead, or if they were holding anybody hostage. Nobody knew anything yet and they had three floors to check before they could be certain of anything. Munch and Fin headed up one corridor with their guns drawn. They saw nothing and they heard nothing; cautiously, they passed every classroom and looked inside to make sure nobody was there. Fin checked one classroom, saw it was empty, and looked back at his partner who was becoming a shade paler than he usually was.

"What is it?"

Munch shook his head and said, "It's all too damn familiar. They all got shot, Stan, Kaye, Beau…all of them except me, I was right there with them, and I couldn't do anything."

"We don't have time for your damn guilt, John," Fin told him, "Don't make me come over there and slap you."

They made their way over to the other end of the second floor before John just lost it and called out, "Toni where the hell are you!"

They heard somebody's muffled voice in response coming from the floor above. The detectives ran up the stairs two at a time and kicked in the first door near them. The first thing they saw was bloodstains leading from the doorway into the room. Their guns drawn, they headed in and saw Toni lying on top of one of the gunmen.

"It's about damn time you guys showed up," she said, "I've been keeping this guy from disappearing for about half an hour now."

"Is he still alive?" Munch asked, noticing that the guy wasn't moving.

Toni got off the figure in black and Fin pulled off the shooter's ski mask and revealed that it was a teenaged boy, didn't look any older than the other students. He wasn't moving but he was in fact still alive, which Fin couldn't tell if it was a good or bad thing.

"What the hell were you doing here?" Munch asked.

"I don't know," Toni shook her head, "Kathleen got a late start, said she didn't want to come to school, but Kathy told her she had to. So I walked here with her, and I told her I'd be outside if she needed me. Then I heard the gunshots and I came in. The other guy got away, I don't know where he is."

"Tell me something, Toni," Munch said, "At any point in your life did you suffer from the recurring sadistic fantasy of rushing into burning buildings?"

"No," she answered, not getting the point.

"Every time you come around, our jobs become twice as difficult," Munch said as he started undoing his vest, "Raise your arms."

"This is no time for games," Toni said.

"This isn't a game," Munch said as he took off his vest, "Raise your arms."

"Oh no," Toni shook her head, "You keep that thing on, I'll just hide behind you."

"That'd be like hiding a ruler behind a knitting needle," Fin told her, "Get behind me."

"You're a bad luck charm, you know that?" Munch told her as they left the classroom, "_Every_ time you come back to New York, something bad happens, first Jack gets shot, and now this."

Other policemen came up to them with their guns drawn also. Fin nodded to the classroom and told them, "One of the shooters is in there…find the other guy?"

"Not yet," they told him.

Fin had Toni stay behind him as they led her back down the stairwell, and Munch stayed as close behind her as was possible so if anything happened, he'd take the shot instead of her. They made it to the front doors and got out and reunited Toni with Elliot and Kathleen before heading back into the school to continue the search.

"Are you alright?" Elliot asked her.

"I'm fine," Toni answered, "But that guy's going to need a doctor, I broke his arm."

"How?" Elliot asked.

Toni made a bone-breaking sound in her throat as she mimicked twisting the guy's arm around by the wrist in one snapping motion. The same way, Elliot recalled only too well, as was tried with her several months ago when the last mess started.

"What were you doing here?" Elliot asked.

"I don't know," she replied, "I guess you'd call it women's intuition or some crap like that. Can we go home now?"

"Yeah," Elliot answered, his own voice starting to shake by now, "Yeah, you guys go get in the car, I'll take you back."

Kathleen was still heavily shaken up and seemed to be out of it. Toni grabbed her by the arm and pulled her over to Elliot's car.

"He's gone!" Fin said as they came back out.

"What?" Elliot asked.

"The other gunman got away," Munch told him.

"Is there any way this is connected to what happened earlier today?" Elliot asked.

"Same shells, same kinds of weapons used, that's all we know so far," Fin said, "Nobody here's died yet."

* * *

Elliot had barely been home for 15 minutes when his cell phone rang. He left his wife and the kids in the living room watching the coverage on the news as he took the call in the kitchen. "Stabler."

"Elliot."

"Tony?" Elliot couldn't believe his ears, "How's it going?"

"Well I'm not in Minnesota yet," Tony said, laughing a little. It sounded like he'd had something to drink and was starting to get buzzed. "If the license plates outside are any indication I'm either leaving West Virginia or entering Arkansas. So what's going on there?"

"Well you picked a hell of a time to leave," Elliot told him, "There was a shooting at my daughter's school today and Toni was there."

"Are they okay?"

"Yeah," Elliot lowered his voice so he wouldn't be heard in the next room, "Toni got her out of there, then went back and beat the hell out of one of the shooters. The other one got away."

"But the girls are okay?" Tony asked.

"Yeah…I pulled Elizabeth and Dickie out and brought them home too, they're all shaken up, your daughter on the other hand, she seems to be taking it all very well. Can I put her on with you?"

"Sure."

Elliot headed into the living room and held his phone out, "Toni, it's your father."

Toni got up from the couch, took the phone and headed into the kitchen, "Daddy?"

At that time, Tony was nowhere near when he had told Elliot he was. In truth, he was currently staying in a hotel room over in New Jersey. He had cleaned out his mini-bar and was just killing time at the moment. "How are ya, baby?" he asked.

"I'm fine, how are you?"

"Can't complain," he answered, "How're things going over there? They feeding you?"

"It's okay here," Toni said, "When are you coming home?"

"About a week," Tony answered, "Maybe a little longer."

He heard something change in his daughter's voice as she said, "I wish you were here."

"I wish I was too, baby, but I'll be home soon, in the meantime you've got Elliot to drive crazy."

"I miss you," Toni said.

"I miss you too," he replied, "But it won't be for too long, you'll see."

* * *

Meanwhile in the living room, Elliot was having to deal with the fact that he had to get back to work and leave his wife to take care of Kathleen, who seemed to be going into shock. She had hardly said a word during the drive home and now she hadn't moved from where she sat down in a chair and her eyes just stared straight ahead at nothing, she was like a zombie.

"Kathleen," he said as he knelt down beside her to get her attention, "Are you okay?"

She blinked for what seemed like the first time since she got home, she turned her head and looked at her father, "I thought they were going to shoot me."

"Come on," Elliot grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.

Kathleen's eyes got wide, "Where're we going?"

"I think you need to go upstairs and lie down for a while and rest," Elliot told her.

Toni came back into the living room and handed Elliot back his phone, "What's going on?"

"Toni, will you take Kathleen upstairs and help her lie down?" Elliot asked.

"What's she need my help for?" Toni asked.

"Toni," Elliot's voice changed just the slightest bit so she would know he was in a no-nonsense mood, "Will you go with her, please?"

"Okay, okay," she replied, "Come on, Kathleen."

Kathy waited until the two girls had gone upstairs to ask Elliot, "You said she was there when the shooting occurred?"

"Yeah," Elliot replied.

"Well why the hell is she acting like this, then?" Kathy asked him.

"Like what?" Elliot asked.

"Like nothing happened," Kathy said, "What's wrong with her?"

"I don't know, Kathy, and I really don't have time for this," Elliot said, "If there's any way that what happened at school is connected to what happened early this morning, I have to get back out there."

"Elliot!" Kathy called after him as he headed for the door, "Your kids need you!"

"Kathy, they need me to figure out who did this and get him off the street before he shoots someone else," Elliot replied. Seeing that familiar look on Kathy's face, Elliot came to a momentary truce, "I'll go talk to her."

He went upstairs and came to the girls' bedroom where Toni was doing a poor imitation of tucking Kathleen in.

"Hey Toni, do you mind?" he asked.

"Why should I mind?" she replied, "I'm up, I'm down, like a yoyo."

All the same, she headed to the door which Elliot promptly closed behind her, then went over to the bed to speak to his daughter.

"How're you feeling, Kathleen?" he asked.

"I'm scared, Daddy," she told him, "What if that guy really wanted to shoot _me_? What if he comes after me?"

"He's not going to," Elliot assured her, she started to talk again but he cut her off, "Listen, he's not going to come after you, he's not going to come after anyone else, I'm going to make sure of that because I'm going back there and we're going to catch him. So you don't have anything to worry about, okay?" She nodded, "Good." He kissed her on the forehead and added, "Now try to relax, I'll be home tonight."

Elliot left the room and pulled the door shut behind him, coming face to face with Toni in the hall.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well what?" Elliot asked.

"If she starts getting hysterical later, you want me to smack her?" Toni asked him.

"Do me a favor and don't," Elliot said, "I have to go back to work, do you think you can help Kathy hold down the fort around here until I get back?"

"No problem," Toni assured him, "I'm better than a guard dog…I don't bark, I only bite, and I don't take strange meat that gets thrown over the fence."

"Toni, can I ask you a question?" Elliot said.

"Sure."

"How come none of what's happened today has bothered _you_?" he asked her.

"Elliot, I've been through too much shit to let a little thing like snipers _really_ worry me," Toni answered, "We live in New York, all kinds of bad shit happens here all the time for no reason. Gunmen, terrorists, bombs, drugs, rapists, muggers…I've lived through it all and I've seen what they can do, and let me tell you, they don't bother me. The only thing that scares me is the idea of being kept away from my father again. Never seeing him again, that's the _only_ thing I have to worry about."

Elliot didn't know whether to be relieved or concerned by that statement, but he hadn't time to worry about it now.


	9. Chapter 9

"Well Kathleen was pretty shaken up and couldn't tell me much, but I did manage to get a description out of Toni on the second gunman," Elliot told the detectives back at the SVU squad room, "Unfortunately she had her hands full with…what's the guy's name she caught?"

"Mark Leonard, 17 years old," Fin said, "Student at the school, found an AK-47 under one of the desks in the classroom Toni was holding him in. Turns out ol' Mark ordered it online and had it shipped to his house last week."

"It's people like that that give AK-47s a bad name," Munch commented.

"Anyway, all that Toni could say for certain was that the second guy was older, taller and fatter," Elliot said.

"That's about half the population," Munch said.

"Did Mark say who he was working with?" Elliot asked.

"He's on morphine for a busted arm, he's not going to be telling us much of anything," Cragen said, "So what're we thinking? He and an older friend decide to shoot up the school just for the hell of it?"

"We haven't checked to see if all the people working at the school were accounted for," Munch said, "It could be a disgruntled teacher, a janitor gone postal…"

"Or maybe Mark had a boyfriend," Fin said.

Olivia came in and said, "Captain, somebody just reported finding the black clothes the second gunman wore in a dumpster over on 97th Street."

"Let's go," Elliot said.

* * *

"Well Toni was right," Elliot said as he looked at the XL tag on the black sweat shirt he pulled out of the dumpster, "This guy was fatter."

"Did you see who put the clothes in here?" Olivia asked the 50-something year old woman who called it in.

"I think so," she said, "I saw a man putting something in here and then he ran off. I was curious, so I looked in, and I had heard about the shooting earlier today."

"Did you see what he looked like?" Elliot asked.

"I think he was in his 30s, he was about six feet tall…he had short hair, kind of like a buzz cut, and he hadn't shaved yet, he had a fat face."

"And did you see what he was wearing?" Olivia asked.

"Uh…a gray hooded jacket, a white shirt, dark blue jeans, and brown boots," the woman told them.

"Okay, _did_ you see which way he went?" Olivia asked.

"Yes," the woman said and pointed, "He went into that apartment building over there."

"Has he left?" Elliot asked as Olivia called in for backup.

"I haven't seen him come out," the woman answered.

"Okay, thank you," Elliot said, "We'll call you if we need to ask you anything else."

Elliot's cell phone rang and he answered it. It was Cragen.

"Warner's got something for you to see, you need to get down to the medical examiner's office."

"We just found out where the shooter is," Elliot said, "Liv's calling in reinforcements."

"We'll take care of him," Cragen said, "Just get your asses over to Warner's."

* * *

"The DNA found inside Lindsey Vogel doesn't match either of the boys she was with at the time of her murder," Warner told them.

"They didn't attack her?" Elliot asked.

"I checked the dental records for Tommy Giraldi and Lenny Camonte," Warner explained, "Neither matches the bite marks on her breasts, their DNA didn't match the saliva or the seminal fluids."

"So…what?" Olivia was trying to figure it out, "She's attacked, she goes to them and then the shooter picks that moment to kill them?"

"There was only one attacker, I checked the system and it comes back to one guy," Warner told them, "Arnold Kramer, he was previously arrested for sexual assault of a minor."

"And he graduates to first degree murder," Elliot said.

* * *

"Well, the bust was a _real_ bust," Munch said later when they returned to SVU, "The gunman, who we _have_ managed to identify as Arnold Kramer, age 33, who _did_ live in the apartment we went to, managed to get away before we could get in there."

"Well that's just great," Elliot sourly replied, "Kramer's the one that shot the first three kids this morning _and_ he raped that girl."

"We might be able to get a hold of him yet," Fin told Elliot, "He wasn't there, but his brother was."

"What brother?"

"Angel Kramer," Munch answered, "Older brother, age 43, _he_ was in the apartment, apparently the two brothers shared it."

"You think Angel's going to give up his brother?" Olivia asked.

"He might," Fin put a box of tapes on the table, "Found Angel watching some 'home movies' when we went in. Turns out he was the landlord of several buildings and he had installed spy cameras in certain apartments to videotape the tenants."

"That's not our territory," Cragen said.

"It is when the people on the tapes aren't even old enough to drive," Munch told him.

Elliot suddenly got a strange look on his face. "Arnold on any of them?" Elliot asked.

"No, but it doesn't matter," Munch said, "He still videotaped teenaged kids having sex and in the eyes of the law, that's still called producing child pornography."

"The tapes go back several years," Fin explained, "He had a whole collection of them he'd been building up, we need to go through the tapes and see if we can I.D. the victims. Maybe we'll get lucky and some of them already found out and reported it to the police."

"The whole family is a bunch of sick bastards," Elliot commented.

"However, that still doesn't explain the link between Arnold Kramer and Mark Leonard," Cragen said.

Elliot grumbled to himself, "It's going to be one of those days."

* * *

Elliot stayed at SVU late into the night, when he finally went home, it was late enough everybody should've been in bed, and most of them were. He closed the door and locked it, and turned on the light in passing, and about had a heart attack when he heard coming from the living room, "Hi, Elliot."

He about jumped and saw Toni sprawled out on the couch.

"Toni, what're you doing down here?" he asked as he headed into the living room, "Are you sick?"

"No, I'm fine," Toni dryly and tiredly answered.

However, Elliot could tell she was not fine. Something was bothering her and it seemed to be eating at her. But he didn't know what to do about it because he was a father four times over, three of them with girls, and he didn't know how to handle a teenaged girl's problem that didn't involve homework, trouble with friends at school, trouble with boys, looking ugly or being fat.

"What's the matter?" Elliot asked.

Toni looked about asleep but very coherently she answered, "I miss my dad."

Elliot felt a stabbing pain in his stomach. It was that good old Catholic guilt shining on through again; and not just Catholic guilt either, also the guilt of being a father who likewise was not always there for his kids when he should've been.

"He'll be back in a few days, Toni, you know that," Elliot said.

"Yeah I know," she grumbled in response, "But it doesn't make waiting any easier."

Elliot wanted more than anything, to change the subject, he asked Toni, "How's Kathleen doing?"

"Alright, she's talking now," Toni answered, "She ate dinner, she went to sleep, in my book that's doing alright. Did you find the other guy?"

"No, we found out who he is," Elliot said, "We're hoping to find him soon."

"Good," Toni said as she stretched out and folded her arms on her chest, "I hope you do too."

"Why don't you go on up to bed?" Elliot asked.

"I can't sleep up there," Toni said, "I'm not used to sharing a room with somebody…this is more familiar for me."

"It is?"

"Oh sure…" Toni pushed herself up on her elbows and pointed to the chair beside the couch, "All the time, my dad would fall asleep in the recliner, too tired to go upstairs to bed, and I'd just lay down here right beside him and go to sleep. It seems it's always been that way. He'd always fall asleep in the recliner when I was little…after my mother died he worked a lot to make ends meet. He went through a lot of jobs back then."

"As what?" Elliot asked.

"Nothing too prestigious, he just barely graduated high school, but he was a damn hard worker," Toni said, "He almost always fell asleep before I did. And you know back then, he used to smoke so every night when I got ready for bed I had to make sure he didn't fall asleep with a lit one in his hand, he had a habit of doing that too, he'd just be lying back and resting, and then he'd be dead to the world and about to burn up the chair. My God I miss that man, he's only been gone two days and I miss him this much."

"It's understandable," Elliot said, "You guys were apart for so long…"

"Yeah…and we may have never had the ideal relationship," Toni said as she lay back down, "But we had some good times together…and we could talk to each other…that's something a lot of families don't have…I think especially when it's parents and kids of the opposite sexes, that makes it awkward, but it just comes naturally for us. You know, neither of us ever _really_ sleeps too well…so we usually spend a lot of time drinking beers in the living room and just talking…I think we talk more at night than in the whole day. And I'm glad we do because we've had a lot of things _to_ talk about."

"Yeah? Like what?" Elliot asked.

"One thing we always talked about was, what would happen if I got pregnant?" Toni said, "Because I'll be honest with you, Elliot, all those years I was with those people…we never really bothered much with protection, and I never went on the pill…you know, doing that would only make it all the more real and I was trying to forget it was happening, trying to think it was a dream. But…that was another reason I didn't mind so much when it was girls, you can't get pregnant then…and I was in no condition to bring another me into this world. And as for the other stuff…well, I guess God figured I'd suffered enough…I went to a lot of clinics where they didn't ask many questions, and the tests always came back clean, thank God."

"Toni…" Elliot was trying to think of how to ask something that had been on his mind all day, "What would you do if you'd ever run into one of those people that raped you?"

"Well the ones from when I was 9 through 12, I don't remember all that well, so I could be looking them in the face every day and not know it. And after 12…you can't really call that rape…I didn't want to sleep with those people, but I never tried to stop it either."

"What about the older ones?"

"What about it?"

"That's statutory rape," Elliot said.

"Not to me it wasn't…the oldest wasn't ever more than 25, if it would've been a 30 year old, or a 45 year old pervert, then it would've been different, but two years, five years, seven years, who cares?" Toni asked, "Least of all I don't…you can't look at the age, Elliot, you have to look at the person…and they weren't all bad, some of them were okay to be with…and I still see some of them around."

"Like who?" Elliot asked.

"There's one…he's a bailiff at the courthouse now…I slept with him a few times when I was…14…15…"

"And how old was he?"

"19, 20…I don't know…anyway, statute of limitations has run out so you can't go after him even if you wanted to," Toni said, "He's an okay guy, he was just going through a lot of shit back then, we all were."

"Yeah well that still doesn't excuse it."

"Look Elliot, he never hit me, and he never raped me, he let me stay with him when it was the dead of winter, I didn't have a coat and he had central heating and hot running water, and a full fridge. I'm not proud of it but it was survival, that's all that it was, besides, it could've been a lot worse. You take all the women who stand on street corners all night to do the same kind of work, and they get paid for it but a large part of that money usually goes to their johns, or for bail, or for a drug habit…at least I never had to do any of that," Toni said, "There was no monetary gain from it so legally it wasn't prostitution."

Elliot, for all his years in SVU and all the time he spent gathering the most personal and intimate details of people's lives, couldn't help feeling nauseated by this conversation, but still he had to ask, "And you talk to your father about this kind of stuff?"

"I had to tell somebody," she said, "And he was in Rikers, he saw that kind of stuff going on all the time, so he didn't have any pre-conceived black or white views on how it worked. Oh yeah, we had a lot of talks about stuff like that, and death…"

"And?" Elliot asked.

Toni looked up at him and said, "And when they bury me, I want my hair dyed bright red like the old Indians used to do."

* * *

Toni sat up when she heard people screaming. She realized it was morning, and after a minute she identified the two loud voices as Elliot and Kathy, who were coming down the stairs.

"Will you keep your voice down?" Elliot said to Kathy.

"Don't tell me what to do, Elliot!"

They came into view and Kathy jumped when she saw Toni.

"I didn't know you were already down here," Kathy said, her voice now having been taken down a few notches.

"I figured Kathleen would want to sleep alone," Toni said by way of explanation, "After yesterday the last thing that girl needed was a roommate."

"Elliot, I wish you would stay home today, Kathleen is still terrified about what happened yesterday," Kathy said as they went into the kitchen.

Toni got up off the couch and followed the two adults, offering her own opinion, "Don't worry about Kathleen, she's still at that fine young rubber band age, she can snap back from anything, just like me."

"Somehow I doubt that," Elliot mumbled as he put on the coffee.

"Kids aren't as psychologically affected by everything like adults are," Toni continued, "It's a proven scientific fact."

"Oh yeah? Who says?" Elliot asked.

"Never mind."

"Kathy, I know I need to be here, but I also need to be at work, trying to catch this guy to make sure he doesn't do this to anybody else's kids," Elliot told her.

"Why can't somebody else do it?" Kathy asked.

"If Sherlock Holmes were suddenly called away from a case, putting Jupiter Jones in his place would do very little good," Toni said, "Elliot knows everything firsthand, he was there, he has to go, don't worry Kathy, I'll stay here and keep an eye on your daughter. I've never let anything happen to anybody yet, and I don't intend to start now."

"Toni, do you mind? This is a private discussion," Elliot said.

"Elliot, you forget who you're talking to, in my world there is _no_ privacy," Toni replied, "Don't worry, I'll hold down the fort. You just go find the bastard and put him away."

* * *

As Elliot drove into work, he tried to think what number this made the current fight he was having with Kathy. Number 816 or something, but it didn't matter much to keep score since they always fought over the same thing, him not spending enough time at home with she and the kids, and spending too much time at work. If she only understood…but he would never put her through that for the world. He'd never put his kids through that either. It was a catch-22 for him, no matter what he did, something would always be wrong and he'd be responsible for it.

He pulled in outside of the station and headed in. A rain had come out of nowhere and he got pelted by a good part of it before he reached the doors.

"You look like hell," Cragen observed as he entered the squad room.

"Yeah, it was a long night," Elliot offered as his only explanation.

"Who're you telling?"

Elliot watched Cragen walk away and he asked Olivia, "Did I miss something here?"

"Munch stayed here all night going through the tapes found at Kramer's apartment," Olivia said, "He and Cragen have been wearing each other's nerves out all night."

"The Captain didn't go home either?"

"He threatened to have Munch forcibly removed from the building, and Munch threatened to have Cragen charged with kidnapping if he did," Olivia said, "I've been hearing about it for an hour already." She half closed her eyes and rolled them, "Don't ask."

"Any breakthrough on the tapes yet?" Elliot asked.

"Might go ask Munch, he's still watching them," Olivia said.

Elliot went to the room where Munch had been running VHS tapes through the VCR all night trying to make some IDs on the people caught on camera. He was surprised to find Munch seemingly waiting for him, and he looked sick.

"Find anything?" Elliot asked.

"Plenty…Kramer chose to specifically implant Big Brother's eyes in the bedrooms and bathrooms frequented primarily by minors. It's all sickening…we've collected tapes taken so far from…20 different apartments in 6 different buildings…must be at least 200 kids already."

"Sick bastard," Elliot commented.

"Yeah, and I made one particularly disturbing discovery last night around 2 o' clock," Munch told him.

"What's that?" Elliot asked.

Munch took one of the tapes, put it back in the VCR and pressed play.

"Just watch the screen."

Elliot did and saw a picture come up on the TV. The picture was a little fuzzy at first but then it cleared up and he was able to make out that it was filmed in somebody's bathroom. The time stamp on the video said that it took place at 10:21 P.M. on April 17th, five years ago. He saw six teenagers, boys and girls, all either naked or just in their underwear, and they were all gathered around the bathtub. There was another kid in the bathtub, lying naked in the water, unresponsive. Elliot watched the tape and after about a minute, he started to realize the girl lying in the tub looked familiar. She wasn't moving and seemed to be unconscious, and the other kids around her seemed to be doing everything they could think of to make her wake up. One of them turned on the cold tap and a stream of water poured down in the girl's face and she still wasn't moving. Elliot felt his stomach churning as he was beginning to make the connection; the girl in the tub, she was a few years younger, a few pounds lighter, and her hair was longer and a bit darker, but it was Toni!

"Oh my God," he said.


	10. Chapter 10

Toni was brought in to see the tape; she, Elliot and Munch watched it in a room shut away from everyone else at the precinct. Toni sat at the table and watched the tape, Elliot alternated between looking at the tape and then back at Toni. Munch on the other hand was strictly watching her because he'd already seen the tape, and he noted that Toni looked mildly uncomfortable, but not as she should've, instead she looked like she was standing in line waiting to get the score back on her written test for a driver's license.

On the TV screen, somebody turned on the cold water tap and a stream of water washed over her face and poured into her mouth and still she didn't move. After a few more minutes, she started coughing the water up and turning her head from side to side. It took her a few tries to get her eyes open and she tried to sit up in the tub, at which point the other teenagers helped her up, and it was at that point that the tape cut off. Munch turned off the TV and said to Toni, "Off the record, Toni, I took a lot of stuff in the 60s and even _I_ never had a reaction like that, so what the hell were they passing out at the party that night?"

"I don't know," she replied, "I think I was just drinking a lot back then."

"Must've been grain alcohol to have that effect," Munch said, "We know you have an unusually high tolerance to booze."

"Toni," Elliot said firmly, and pointed at the screen, "What the hell was going on that night?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary," she nonchalantly replied, "Just your average late night orgy. Everybody had gotten together for some big blast, yeah some of them brought pills, stuff to make them so high they'd forget where they were, and just feel everything…"

"Sounds like crystal meth," Munch said, "Keeps them high for hours during which time they have long sessions of sex without needing to rest in between."

"Yeah, maybe," Toni replied as she looked to the side.

"And you?" Munch asked.

She shook her head, "I never went for that stuff…I was more the voyeur of the group…I had no place to go while that was happening so I mainly just stood around and watched…after a while things just started to blur, like on one of those damn rides at Coney Island…and the next thing I knew I was in a tub full of cold water with everybody standing over me."

"Why were you naked?" Elliot asked.

"I don't know, alright?" Toni asked, "That's actually one part of my life I've chosen not to try and remember. Look, I don't get what any of this from back then has to do with me now."

"This tape was in the guy's apartment we arrested," Elliot said, "Them and a dozen others."

"Fine, then prosecute him for the others," Toni said, "But leave me out of it."

"Toni."

"Elliot!" she replied, and pointed to the TV, "That tape was made 5 years ago, statute of limitations has run out for me anyway."

"It's not a rape," Elliot said.

"She's still right, partially," Munch said, and both turned to look at him as he explained, "Manufacturing child pornography is a felony and all felonies short of murder have five year statutes of limitations in this state…however," he added as he turned to Toni, "This tape was made in April, this is only March, so there'd still be a month left if you want to take your case to court."

"What case? I have no case," Toni said, "And I don't want one. Look Elliot, the guy that made this tape, has he put it on the internet? Has he made copies and sold it to people?"

"So far as we know, he never made copies and he only kept them in his own private viewing collection," Munch answered.

"Then I don't care…find the victims whose time hasn't run out, and see if they give a damn about it, I don't, and I'm not going to be put through the hellhole that is your judicial system again, having every personal detail about my private life dredged up for everybody to hear about."

On that note, she got up and stormed out of the room, Elliot started after her but Munch pulled him back and said, "I'll go after her, you stay here incase she starts throwing things."

Munch stayed a few steps behind so she wouldn't catch onto him following her immediately, and he saw her disappear into the restroom and went in after her, he found her over by one of the sinks, pounding it with her fists.

"Try harder," Munch suggested, "I don't think it learned its lesson yet."

Toni slowly raised her head and saw his reflection in the mirror and said, "This is the ladies' room."

"I won't tell if you won't, besides, I have an honorary member's card," Munch said as he cautiously headed over to her, "Look, I'm sorry you had to be put through this."

"It's just the way Elliot is," Toni replied, "Too damn overprotective."

"If it makes you feel any better, in a way I know what you're going through," Munch said, "Did I ever tell you that back in Baltimore, one of my ex-girlfriends who worked at a museum, took a picture of me from my flower child days," he sashayed his boney body from one side to the other as he added, "Au natural, had it blown up and stuck it on the wall for everybody in Baltimore to see?"

Toni started to laugh, "Are you kidding?"

"That wasn't the worst part, everybody in the homicide unit found out about it before I did," Munch said, "And that damn picture is probably still hanging up in that place, except she finally did me a little justice and stuck one of their promotional flyers up in an…appropriate place."

Toni laughed harder and about fell on the floor before sobering up and said, "I need to get back to the house, Kathy's home, she kept the kids out of school today, and she's about to go nuts with Elliot not being there."

"I'll run you back," he offered.

"Don't bother," Toni replied, "Just get back to work on catching this guy."

* * *

"We've got about 130 cases of manufactured child pornography against this guy," Elliot said three days later when all the tapes had been gone through and most victims had been identified, "He cut a deal with the D.A. and told us where his brother is."

"And?" Olivia asked.

"That's the problem, he's already left New York," Cragen added.

"I know, Angel gave him a change of clothes and some money and his truck, but he wouldn't say why Arnold shot those kids or went to the school, I guess he doesn't know himself…we didn't see Arnold leave the building because he went out through the fire exit on the rear side where we couldn't see it from the streets," Elliot said.

"It gets worse," Cragen told them, "We got a call earlier from Baltimore." As soon as Munch opened his mouth, Donald replied, "I know, I know, you're never going back there…seems that Arnold Kramer is establishing a serial pattern for himself…three more teenagers shot dead in one place on the exact hour. Have we determined a connection between Arnold Kramer and Mark Leonard?"

"Well Arnold was a student at that high school about 15 years ago," Munch said, "Maybe he just hated the place, Mark certainly did."

"But the two went into this together, so there's got to be more than that," Olivia said.

"Yeah well ol' Markie isn't giving up anything on this guy," Fin told them, "When the cops canvassed the school, they found his gun but not Kramer's..."

"He ditched his clothes but took his gun with him?" Elliot said, "None of this is making any sense."

"Whether it does or not, he's our perp first," Cragen said, "Elliot, I'm assigning you and Fin to work with the Baltimore police and any other jurisdiction this M.O. pops up in, to catch this bastard and extradite him back here for the murders of Lindsey Vogel, Tommy Giraldi and Lenny Camonte. Their families want justice and the press will have a field day with us if we fail to deliver."

"Will do, Captain," Elliot said, knowing that he'd be getting it from all sides when his family heard about this.

* * *

"You're going away?" Kathy asked.

"This guy's already left the state but we need to bring him back to stand trial for the murders," Elliot said, "Fin and I are going to follow the path he's led so far and see if we can catch him before he gets to…Mexico or wherever he's heading ultimately."

Toni had overheard the conversation as she headed into the room and said to Kathy, "This shouldn't be anything new for you, he's been gone before, undercover, this will be about the same thing except the bastard won't know that Elliot's coming, it'll be easier to catch him that way without anybody getting shot."

"Toni, can I see you for a minute?" Elliot asked her.

"Sure."

She followed Elliot upstairs to his bedroom while he grabbed a few quick things, "I know that Kathy's worried and I can't blame her. I don't know if we're going to be able to catch this guy…"

"Or if you're even coming back," Toni added.

Elliot started to respond but stopped and looked at her. They didn't exchange words on the matter but it was obvious that had been on his mind as well.

"Don't worry, Elliot, I'll hold down the fort here until you come back," Toni said, "Don't worry about it, I'm not about to let anything happen to your family."

"I really appreciate it, Toni, this wasn't exactly part of the plan when you came here," Elliot told her.

"Things change, just go and bring that bastard back here for trial," she said, "Or a hanging, either one will be fine with me."

Elliot turned and headed back downstairs where he hugged all his kids and told them he'd be back in a few days, and tried the same thing with Kathy, but she was in a mood that didn't want him even touching her.

"I'll be back, Kathy," Elliot told her.

"I hope so," was her only reply.

* * *

Elliot returned to SVU where he and Fin were going over the game plan with Cragen one last time before they shipped out. Before they left, Elliot stopped by Olivia's desk and asked her for a favor.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know how long we're going to be gone so when you punch out at night, could you swing by my house and make sure everybody's okay there?" he asked her.

"Sure," Olivia answered.

"Alright, let's go," Fin said.

"Hey Elliot," Munch called after them, "If you run into Kaye Howard, give her my regards."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate them as much as a hernia," Elliot replied.

"So, where are _we_ now?" Olivia asked.

"Well we still have Mark Leonard to deal with," Munch said, "One of these days he's gotta wake up and when he does, we'll be there and hammer him about what he knows about this guy."

"Think he'll talk?" Olivia asked.

"Well he hasn't had mommy and daddy taking care of all his problems his whole life for him but he's still bound to lawyer up, but there's always the slim chance he'll be terrified of the charges Casey can throw at him and tell us what he knows about Kramer."

"Never a dull moment," Olivia said as the phone on her desk started to ring, "Special Victims Unit."

* * *

It was the first night without Elliot coming home and everybody seemed to be taking it fairly well. Dickie and Elizabeth were staying the night with friends and Kathleen was out on a date, so it was just Toni and Kathy left at the house now; Kathy on a couch and Toni in a chair in the living room, each of them keeping to themselves and neither saying a word, especially not to the other.

"Well this has been kind of fun," Toni finally said, breaking the silence, "Now, are you going to tell me why you're going off on Elliot lately?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kathy replied.

"I heard you two fighting the other day, and I know it's not the first time," Toni said, "You two were going at it months before too, weren't you?"

"Every couple has arguments," Kathy insisted.

"Yeah, but the man usually doesn't walk out of the room crying," Toni said as she stood up, "I don't know what you said to him, Kathy, but whether you think he listens to you or not, he does."

Kathy was starting to lose her hospitable attitude towards Toni, now when she spoke her voice was harder, colder. She wouldn't turn to look at Toni, instead she dropped her gaze to the living room floor and said, "His family needs him."

"And he needs his family, but you know what he is," Toni said, "He's a cop, and you've always known him as a cop."

"He wasn't a cop when we got married," Kathy said, "He had just gotten out of the marines."

"Okay but you knew he wanted to be a cop, you had to have known what that would mean…it's not a regular 9-5 job, Kathy, you can't just punch out and hang your job at the door when you go home for the night."

"His job means more to him than we do," Kathy said, "His kids need a father and I need my husband."

"Kathy, you're not getting it," Toni said, "Elliot is as devoted to his job as he is, _because_ he has a family. He sees you, he sees his kids, he sees his kids in those kids, he saw his daughters in me, he doesn't want what he has to put up with every day, to happen to you guys and the only way he knows to keep that from happening is to put these guys away, and he can't do that staying at the house." She took a step over to Kathy, who still refused to look up at her, "Elliot always says how you're threatening to change the locks on him, take the kids and leave him…would you _really_ do that to him?"

Now Kathy looked up at her. The look in her eyes was not the usual 'what business do you have telling me about my husband?', it was something else. "It isn't just that he's always gone, when he _is_ here, he never talks, he never tells me anything."

"Yeah, and there's a reason for that, he's protecting you, and your kids," Toni said, "What do you expect him to do? Over dinner tell you about how he's looking for a guy that gets his kicks off of locking little girls in a room with him and refusing to let them out until they perform oral sex on him? Or while you're all sitting around watching TV for him to tell you about the teenaged boy whose father has been raping him since he was 8 years old and invited his friends over for a go at the boy too? Why do you think he doesn't talk to you?"

"And how is it," Kathy's voice was starting to break now but she continued, "How is it you know so much more about my husband than I do?"

"Because I'm there every day, I see the same things he does, I have lived through the things he's investigated…Elliot's a good man, Kathy, maybe not the best father or the most attentive husband, but he does the best he can…" Toni was starting to cool down now, and added as she sat back down, "And you better start to appreciate it…if you two were divorced right now, I don't know that there'd be anything stopping me from taking him away from you permanently."

Kathy looked over at her, a look on her face somewhere between unbelieving and humored, "You can't be serious."

"Oh I don't know," Toni said as she stretched her arms behind her head and put up her feet, "Nicely built man in his 40s with plenty of life experience, a tour in the marines, and a cop, and a damn good cop, and you can tell he's devoted to his work, devoted to ridding the world of the rapists and pedophiles and he's not too much above killing them himself…in my book that sounds like a nice catch. Think about it, he's well into his adult years so it's not like some stupid high school crush between classmates, he's been in the real world and he seems to have made a solid place for himself in it, he's physically fit, very passionate, and we know he's damn well fertile, there's got to be some kicks in all that somewhere. Now if I were the marrying type and didn't give a damn about breaking up families, I think I'd steal him right away from you to the best of my abilities…it wouldn't make any difference to me if he comes home every night, just so long as he came home."

Having gotten out of her system her little speech solely intended to hurt Kathy and wake her up, Toni returned to her usual demeanor and said, "Think about it, Kathy, you have four kids, three you still have to raise…you'd never be able to make it on your own, and neither would they. Elliot may not be around much but he's still here, that's what makes all the difference. Take it from me…I had my mother die on me, and then my father was hauled off to Rikers…I spent 8 years without him, and just about all of those days I would've preferred killing myself to what I actually did…but I held on, hoping against all hope that I'd see him again…and now he's out, and now life's worth something again to me." She glanced over at Kathy through one eye and added, "You see, I used to have two parents, then I only had one, and then for a long time I didn't have any…these three knuckleheads here still have the original two, you don't want to start that domino effect."

* * *

"Late night, huh?" Munch asked as he found Olivia still at her desk, looking about half asleep.

"Don't you ever go home?" Olivia asked.

"Do you?" he returned, "I thought Elliot asked you to check on Toni and his family."

"He did, but I don't think he meant tonight, he's only been gone a few hours," she replied.

"That's still long enough for Toni to torch the place," Munch said.

Olivia looked over at him, "Why do you always expect the worst of her?"

"It saves time," Munch answered, "Besides, she can take it, she doesn't go off the handle every time somebody has something unflattering to say about her, unlike some people."

Olivia closed her eyes for a second and stretched her arms out, grimacing momentarily when she felt a muscle in her back jerk. She picked up the day's paper that somebody had discarded on her desk and briefly looked over the front page. As she read the cover story, a sound emanated from her throat that got John's attention.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Rikers prison has been evacuated," Olivia said, "They moved all the prisoners out."

"Why?" John asked as he reached for the paper.

Olivia tried to find the reason in the article before he snatched it away, "Some suspicious looking boxes were found in the mail room, they were opened up and it looked like packages of anthrax or something so they're moving all the prisoners to other institutions until the place can be declared safe again."

John made a face, "It's prison, when do people care if it's safe?" He read the article over, "Just great, 14,000 murderers and rapists brought out of their cages….all of them shackled and put on busses to take to other prisons until this whole thing's cleared up, and just where the hell do they think they're going to put them when there's not enough room for everybody as it is?" He didn't wait for her to answer, "They should just hope none of them escape."

"How could they escape?" Olivia asked.

* * *

The next day, Kathy had spent most of the morning thinking about what Toni had said about Elliot. The kids had come back from their friends' homes and were just lounging around the house doing nothing in particular. Kathy was doing the laundry when she heard somebody at the front door. She looked and saw the silhouette of a man at the door, and the man's overall shape looked like Elliot's. How could he be back already? she wondered. He had figured this assignment would take him out of New York for several days.

"Elliot?" Kathy called.

The door opened and she saw the man starting in. She put the clothes down and decided to try and mend things with her husband; as she headed to the door she put on a little smile and tried to sound pleasant. "Elliot, I'm glad that you're back, I was starting to think that we shouldn't…" Kathy's sentence was cut off as she stopped dead in her tracks, and screamed.

It wasn't Elliot who had come in the house.


	11. Chapter 11

Toni and Elliot's kids were upstairs when they heard Kathy screaming and ran downstairs to find out what was the matter. It was to Toni's relief to find that their uninvited guest was none other than her father, and she spent the next few minutes trying to get Kathy to calm down and explain the situation to them. Once Kathy was able to speak again, they moved into the living room to sit down.

"Last time a woman had that reaction to seeing me," Tony explained as he sat down on the couch beside his daughter, "Was when I walked in on my mother-in-law in the shower, _she_ should be mortified? I was the one who had to look at her."

"I'm sorry I screamed at you, Mr. Keller," Kathy said, "Elliot had told me about you before…but he neglected to mention that you two look so much alike."

"Well yeah, that's not exactly something you brag about to people," Tony said, "Another guy walking around New York with this puss, who would?"

Kathy was momentarily left dumbstruck but finally managed to get out, "Well, if you would have called before coming over…"

"I never call anybody before coming," Tony said, "It's a bad omen."

"I beg your pardon?" Kathy asked.

"Then you know he's coming," Toni answered as if that were explanation enough.

"So where _is_ Elliot?" Tony asked.

"He's gone," Dickie answered.

Tony turned to look at the boy, "What do you mean gone? He run away somewhere?"

"Remember that shooting case he told you about?" Toni asked, "One of the guys got away, Elliot and Fin are working with the police up in Baltimore or somewhere, trying to catch the guy and extradite him back here for the murders."

"When did he leave?" Tony asked.

"Yesterday, so he could be gone for a while," Toni answered.

"Oh…" Tony thought for a minute before saying, "Well, that's not a bright idea, go off and leave a woman and her kids here completely vulnerable like a bunch of sitting ducks, anything could happen."

"_I'm_ here," Toni reminded him.

"Yeah," Tony replied, "And until Elliot comes home, maybe I ought to be too…they need a man around the house."

"Oh, you know one?" Toni asked him.

Kathy started to say, "I'm not so sure…" but Tony cut her off.

"Don't mind us," he said, "We're just exchanging words."

"Yeah, and we know a lot of words," Toni added.

"If it's alright with you, Mrs. Stabler," Tony said, "I'd certainly have no problem sticking around for a few days and help keep an eye on the place."

Kathy glanced around at her three kids, who had been getting along fine with Toni and wouldn't want her to go home already, and she knew that once the Kellers were gone, the sense of security they'd been holding onto since Elliot left would go with them. She hadn't appreciated the things Toni had said to her the other night, but she also knew that this girl was more capable of handling an emergency than any of the other kids might be.

"I suppose it would be okay," Kathy said, "Just until Elliot gets back."

"Naturally," Tony responded as he got up from the couch, "I'll make a run back over to our place and get a change of clothes and I'll be back."

"Dad!" Toni called after him, "How was your trip?"

Tony stopped in his steps and looked back at his daughter and her friends. "I'll tell you about it when I get back," he said, and with that he left.

"That's men for you," Toni commented as the door closed behind him, "They're in, they're out, and they don't want to talk…doesn't seem to matter what's going on, they're always like that."

* * *

"I hope Elliot gets back from Baltimore soon," Olivia said later that afternoon as she and Munch returned to the squad room.

"Not me," Munch replied, "I'm liking having you as a partner instead of Fin."

"Why's that?" Olivia asked.

"Well for one thing, when we go driving, it's not like a four hour ride on the tilt-a-whirl," he answered as he took off his jacket and sat down at his desk.

"Oh nooo," Olivia replied, "With you driving it's more like two hours of bumper cars in rush hour." She mimicked jerking a steering wheel from one side to the other while making screeching noises, "I'm gonna ram you!" She looked at John, "Sound familiar?"

"It could be worse," John insisted, "Remember that ride the Kamikaze?"

"Any problems, kids?" Cragen asked as he conveniently got in between them.

"No," they both answered.

"Good," Cragen replied, "That's what I like to hear." He dropped a piece of paper on Munch's desk and told him, "Your witness called while you were out, she says that she remembers something else from the night of the attack."

"Of course," Munch dryly remarked, "She must've known my old tuchus was just getting ready to sit down for once today."

"Still hope Fin stays in Baltimore?" Olivia asked.

"Gotta admit, the empty desks around here make me wonder," Munch said as he picked up the receiver on his phone, "First Cassidy ships out, then Monique, then Lake…which one of us is going to be next on the way to the glue factory?"

"I don't know," Olivia replied just as her phone started ringing, she picked up the receiver and answered, "Special Victims" before the entire station went dark and quiet.

"Unit," she finished as she realized the phone was dead too and put it down, and joined the other detectives who got up to find out what the hell happened.

"Alright," Munch said as he got up, "Who forgot to pay the electric bill?"

* * *

When the power went out at Elliot's house, Kathleen, Dickie and Elizabeth all about went into a panic. It was Toni who managed to shut them all up so they could hear Kathy talk.

"We might've thrown a breaker, I'll check the fuse box," she said as she got up.

Toni stayed behind with the kids and once Kathy was gone, she said to them, "Alright, you heard her, now if nobody loses their head then nobody loses their _head_, until she gets back, sit down and shut up!"

They did as they were told and the three of them flopped back onto the couch.

"What do you think it was?" Kathleen asked.

"Don't know," Toni replied, "Do you guys have power outages often?"

"No," was the unanimous response.

"Great," she dryly remarked.

Kathy returned in a minute with the news that there was nothing wrong with the breakers in the fuse box.

"So we're probably looking at a blackout here," Toni said, "In the middle of New York, that'll be _real _fun tonight, I can see it all now, riots, looting, you name it."

The kids all started groaning and moaning at the idea of going through the day and possibly the night without any power.

"Alright, everybody shut up," Toni told them, "If it didn't kill mankind for five thousand, nine hundred and some odd years having no electricity, it won't kill anybody here to go a day without TV and eating sandwiches for dinner. We've got it easy here…what if the blackout spread to the police department?"

"Oh my God," Kathy said as the thought just seemed to hit her.

"Those young cops are going to be in for a rude surprise now," Toni commented.

* * *

"Hey Captain," Munch said as he tried punching up a report on a typewriter, "How come we don't have a backup generator in this whole damn place? With all the information that we so heavily rely on with the assistance of computers, don't you think that would make sense?"

"Munch, shut up and just get back to work," Olivia told him.

"I'm only saying," Munch replied in his defense.

"You're always doing that, that's probably how we got the blackout," Olivia said, "Your mouth probably used up all the power."

"Ouch."

"Cut it out you two," Cragen warned them, "I'm not in the mood for it right now. Everything's out, lights, power, the phones, even the radios are dead."

"Maybe Klaatu decided to make an encore appearance," Munch suggested.

"Shut up," Olivia told him.

"Or maybe Maple Street has expanded to our squad," Munch added, "That'll be beautiful, everybody running around the squad room shooting each other, rambling on about monsters."

"And if _anybody_ knows about rambling," Olivia responded.

"What're you getting on my case for?" John asked her, "I didn't do this."

"I know."

"And it's not like you're the only one now who has to type up everything the old fashioned manual way, and thumb through paper files for information," he added.

"I know," Olivia absentmindedly replied as she looked down at her files.

"I wonder how far it's spread," John said, "And it's one thing for the power to go out, but what about the phones?"

"I don't know," Olivia replied, seeming to pay even less attention to him than before.

"I sure hope Fin and Elliot are having better luck than we are right now," Munch said.

* * *

Tony returned to the Stabler home within the hour to report that the power was out as far as was the distance between the two points being their homes.

"That's just great," Toni bitterly replied, "Power out for miles…gonna have the cops out in the middle of the damn road blowing whistles and directing traffic."

"At least it'll keep them on their toes," her father cynically remarked.

"So how come you're back so early?" Toni asked, "How did it go at the doctor's?"

"How did _you_ know I went to the doctor?" Tony replied.

"Elliot told me," Toni answered.

"I should've known better than to trust him," Tony said.

"What _did_ the doctor say?" she asked her father.

"He said that I have the body of a 35 year old," Tony said as he sat down beside her on the couch, then added, "A dead 35 year old."

"And considering you're only 39," Toni told her father, "That's not good."

"Well it could be a lot worse too," Tony replied, "I _could_ be dead. God knows it's not like I haven't had my fair share of opportunities."

Toni elbowed him to shut up as she saw Kathy and the kids coming back to the living room.

"Mr. Keller," Kathy said hesitatingly, making it obvious she wasn't sure what to say, "I've been trying to figure out some sort of sleeping arrangement if you're going to be staying here…but since Toni's been sleeping on the couch lately…"

"That's no problem," Tony assured her, "I can sleep _anywhere_."

"He can too," Toni added, "He's the _only_ person I ever saw pass out on a pool table."

"I can just sleep on the floor," Tony told Kathy, "Anything would have to beat that God awful cot I was stuck on in Rikers for eight years."

Both Toni and her father couldn't help but notice the sudden change in how Kathy looked. It was obvious that she was still uneasy with having a convicted felon in her home.

"I'm going to guess that you haven't had the pleasure of having too many former shut-ins as houseguests," Tony said.

"As you can see, Kathy," Toni said, "We're not much on beating around the bush. If there's something you'd like to say to either of us, go ahead and say it, you can't hurt our feelings, we have none, several years of hard drinking took good care of that."

"It's not that," Kathy started to say, but it was obvious to both Kellers that it was just that.

"I bet I can guess what you're thinking," Tony said as he got up, "Your husband told you all about me, told you I was doing life in Rikers for killing three guys…and it's all true, but I don't want anybody getting the idea that I bump people off just for the hell of it. It's hardly like I can compare to...say, Jack the Ripper, or Ted Bundy, somebody who kills for the thrill of it or for their own perverted reasons. I'm like a rattlesnake, I kill when I have to, I attack when I feel threatened…but you," he shook his head, "You are no threat, not you, or any of your kids here. So you have nothing to worry about."

* * *

"Kramer ditched his brother's truck by the side of the road and is now said to be driving a hot 1990 blue Chevy pickup," Fin told Elliot as they pulled away from the police precinct, "License plate VNTAGE."

"He should know better than that," Elliot replied, "Vanity plates in the DMV system are like a bright neon arrow. Was anybody in the truck when he stole it?"

"Threw the door open as the owner was starting it up and threw her on the ground and drove off, nobody else was in it," Fin answered.

"Which way is he heading?" Elliot asked.

"Highway 55," Fin told him.

Elliot looked out the window and saw the sign that read Route 122. "Great," he dryly remarked, "I hate long chases."

"I hope the son of a bitch is about out of gas," Fin commented, "Make our jobs easier."

"Ha!" Elliot let out, "Dream on…ah, I hope we can catch this son of a bitch before he kills somebody else. At least Kathy and the kids are safe."

* * *

"You get down to the power company?" Toni asked Kathy and Tony when they came in the door that night.

With both the electricity and the phones out, Kathy had decided to go down to the electric company in person to find out what was the matter. Tony had gone with her incase the people working there decided to get smart with her since she wasn't big or intimidating. Toni had stayed behind with Dickie, Elizabeth and Kathleen, and they'd stayed there in the quiet house and waited for their parents to get home. It got dark and by the light of candles and a couple of flashlights, they made a dinner out of sandwiches, potato chips and soda. Dinner passed without more than a few words, because everybody was thinking the same thing. They were wondering when their parents were going to come home. About an hour passed, and it got even darker out, and then they finally heard Kathy pull into the driveway.

"Yeah and they don't have one damn idea what's going on," Tony said, "They're the ones working right there, and they don't know anymore than we do. They can't say when the power's going to be back on, it could be in an hour, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week for all we know!"

"Well," Toni kept her voice lower than her father, trying to maintain some kind of order in the pitch dark house, "The kids and I already ate. We cleaned the fridge out of whatever didn't need to be cooked…there're still some sandwiches left in the kitchen for you two."

"Thanks, Toni," Kathy said as she shrugged off her jacket.

Tony took the flashlight from Toni's hand and pointed it straight ahead so they could see their way to the kitchen.

"Sure gets dark early around here," he commented as they left the kids in the living room.

"Makes me wish we'd stayed in Vegas," Toni said as she sat down.

"Is it fun there?" Kathleen asked.

"It's better if you're older," Toni answered, "I can't play any of the casino games until next year…but the rest of it's pretty good, you can stay up all night and look at the lights in that damn place…and they have some good shows to go to. I'll like it better next year when I go, next year I'm taking a crap load of money to the slots and the blackjack table, and I'm going to beat the hell out of the baccarat dealers…hey Kathleen, you know how to play baccarat?"

"No," Kathleen shook her head, "My dad would kill me if he ever caught me gambling."

"Doesn't stop you from doing it anyway though, does it?" Toni asked her, and even in the dark was able to see Kathleen's face as she looked away, "Elliot doesn't approve of a lot of things but that never stopped anybody from doing them. Anyway, I bet I could teach you how to play, there's nothing to it."

"Does your dad approve of you gambling?" Dickie asked her.

"Approve, hell, he's the one who taught me in the first place," Toni answered as she got up, "Didn't Elliot teach you guys anything? Don't tell me he never even taught you how to play poker?"

In the dark, the three kids looked to one another and then back across the room to Toni and shook their heads.

"That Catholic embedment's really showing through in him these days," Toni replied, "He's getting too good and high and mighty for everything."

"How long have you known our dad?" Dickie asked her.

"Oh let me think…must be 10 or 11 years now I think," she answered, "I didn't know him too well in the beginning, and I didn't see him for about eight years after that…I'm sure he told you guys about it."

"I don't think so," Elizabeth replied.

"Oh," Toni said, "Well…"

She was cut off by a blinding light coming in through a crack in the Venetian blind at the front window. The kids put their hands up to shield their eyes from the bright light. It was at this time that Tony and Kathy were coming back into the living room with their plates and they also noticed the sudden illumination.

"What is that?" Kathy asked.

Toni went over to the front window and pulled two slats of the blind apart to look through them. "There's a car outside, somebody's coming up here."

The car headlights shut off but she saw one of the two people coming up the sidewalk was carrying a flashlight, and she noticed how the light was being carried, over the person's head instead of straight ahead of them.

"It's the cops!" she said, "Maybe something happened to Elliot."

The kids were starting to panic and they all talked over each other. Kathy had all of them get back so she could go to the door.

"You get back," Toni told Kathy, "It might be some rogue on the force thinking with no power and no phones he could have a lot of fun with you, seeing as how you're no threat to anybody. I'll go see who it is."

"You'll go?" her father laughed, and wrapping his arms around her waist, lifted her up and placed her behind him and he started towards the door. He glanced out the window and waited until both cops were up on the porch and right by the front door before he opened it up.

"Is everybody okay in here?"

Toni knew that voice. "Munch?"

She grabbed the flashlight off the table and shone it on the people at the door and saw Olivia putting her own hand up to ward off the blinding light.

"What're you guys doing here?" Tony asked.

"I was taking Olivia home when she said she needed to stop in and check on everybody," Munch explained, "How're things going here?"

"Don't tell me you guys lost the power at the station too!" Toni said.

"Yes," Munch nodded, "Which as you can imagine is making our jobs _so_ much more fun now," he dryly added.

"How far is this blackout going?" Toni asked, "Did we go into nuclear war and the whole damn country's in EMP now?"

"We have no idea what's going on," Olivia explained.

"Nobody's telling us anything," Munch said.

"Nobody _knows_ anything," Olivia corrected him.

"Nice to know it's not just us," Tony told them.

"Is everybody okay here?" Olivia asked as she looked around at everybody.

"Oh we're fine," Toni said.

"And you," Olivia said to Tony as she poked him in the chest, "When did you get back into town?"

"This morning before the outage hit," he answered, "Did you miss me?"

"What's to miss?" Munch asked, "She just swapped you for Elliot, it's the exact same thing looking at the two of you."

"Any idea how Elliot's doing, Munch?" Toni asked.

"No, we can't get any word into or from Baltimore," Munch shook his head.

"I never thought I'd say it," Toni said, "But I envy Elliot right about now…at least where he is, they've got their lights on and he's not blindly lost in the dark."

* * *

Elliot watched the blur that passed by their car on the road. "What was that?" he asked.

Fin's foot slammed on the gas. "That was a blue '90 Chevy."

"Catch the license plate?" Elliot asked.

"No," Fin replied as the speedometer soared up to 50 and was still climbing, "But we will."

Elliot got on the radio and announced to all the other police cars in the vicinity where they were, where they were heading, and that they had the suspect in sight and were in pursuit of him.

The case continued for eight blocks straight ahead before they ever heard the approach of sirens or saw the flashing lights of any other cars coming to assist in the chase. Kramer tried to lose them a few times but Fin managed to stay right on his ass…unfortunately they hadn't anticipated Kramer coming to a sudden halt in the middle of the road. Elliot knew there was no chance they could stop or swerve to the side in time, he put his arms up to protect his face as he slammed into the dashboard as their car smashed into the back of the truck.

Fin threw the car into park and snatched the keys out, calling over to Elliot, "You okay?"

Elliot leaned back against his seat for a second and felt along the top of his head for blood and commented, "I'm beginning to see why Munch doesn't like riding with you. Come on!"

They got out of the car and went around to the front of the truck, where they saw Arnold Kramer's body slouched against the steering wheel with his head looking over the dashboard. Fin opened the door and pulled the man out of the driver's seat. It was just then that the other squad cars pulled up, just in time to be too late.

"Arnold Kramer," Fin told him, "You're under arrest for murder."

"Great," Elliot said, "Now we can extradite this son of a bitch back to New York and we can go home."

When Olivia returned to SVU the next morning, the power was still out. The detectives tried to make due without the use of their computers, the phones or any updates from the hospitals on the updates if any on several of their victims, it was enough to drive them up the wall, especially Munch, who hadn't stopped complaining about the blackout since it started. They were met with a massive relief in the early afternoon when the lights finally came back on in the building.

"Oh thank God!" Olivia said as she let out a large sigh of relief.

Munch looked up and started saying something she didn't understand.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It's Hebrew, just a little something between me and the Big Guy upstairs," Munch said, "Getting things running around here again is a real lifesaver."

"Let's make sure the computers weren't fried," Olivia said.

"I thought that's just when they're hit by lightning," John commented.

"Still, let's not take any chances," Cragen said, "Check everything, make sure everything is running as it should be."

Munch gave a mock salute and replied, "Aye aye my captain."

Olivia's cell phone rang and she answered it, "Benson."

"Hey Olivia!"

"Elliot!" she said, "What's going on?"

"We caught Kramer," Elliot told her, "He's being shipped back to be booked and arraigned for the murders."

"Well there's a piece of good news, the whole town's been in a blackout since yesterday and things _just_ got back up," Olivia said.

"How are Kathy and the kids?" he asked her.

"They're fine," she told him.

"Good," Elliot said, "They're finishing up some last minute details on the extradition and we should be back in a couple of hours."

"That's great!" Olivia told him, "See you then."

She shut off her cell phone and turned around, and saw Munch was watching something on the TV.

"What's that?" she asked, her heart already leaping up to her throat as she went over to the screen, "Turn up the volume."

On the screen, they saw a bus for Rikers Island turned over on its side and looking like it came through a war zone. There were police and squad cars and ambulances surrounding the area where the bus was. A young blonde reporter faced the camera as Olivia and Munch came into her narration of, "The bus driver, Edward Hicks, who has worked at Rikers prison for 15 years, was found dead this morning in the bus, along with several inmates from Rikers who were being evacuated after a suspected anthrax scare at the prison. The bus which was found outside of Brooklyn; was en route to Southport where the prisoners were to be relocated until further notice. Police now report that at least a dozen inmates who were passengers on this bus have escaped." Mug shots of the escapees came on the screen, "So far all missing inmates have been identified as members of the prison's White Brotherhood, among them, the brotherhood's apparent leader, Christopher Sankt, who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole…"

"Oh my God!" Olivia said as a horrible thought occurred to her.

"I hate to say it," Munch said, "But I told you somebody would escape."

"Sankt's out," Olivia was trying to get a grip on what she'd just heard, "Sankt's out, and he has to know that Elliot killed his brother."

"Meaning Sankt and his boys are probably on their way to Elliot's house to pay him a little visit," Munch realized, past his dark shades his eyes could be seen growing wider, "Only Elliot's not there, Kathy and the kids are!"

"I'll call Kathy and warn her," Olivia said as she turned on her cell phone again.

"Might not be time, come on!" Munch grabbed her by the arm and they started to the door, "We've got to go and hope we get there in time!"


	12. Chapter 12

Author's Note: Finally, the last chapter. I'd like to thank all the readers who have endured this story and its particularly long waiting periods. Hope you enjoy.

When the power came back on in the Stabler household, Kathy turned on the TV and turned it to the news to see if there was any idea as to what was going on. She came across the same news channel that was covering the death of the Rikers bus driver and the escape of several inmates, including Christopher Sankt.

"Oh my God," Toni said.

Kathy didn't get it. "What is it?"

"Christopher Sankt is Bryan Sankt's brother, Bryan Sankt was the son of a bitch who tried to kill me last year so Elliot blew him away," she answered.

"Ol' Chris has got to know that," Tony added, "He knows Elliot killed his brother, so now he's out, he's got a pack of skinheads under his command and they have had about 12 hours to get from that crash site, to this house."

Kathy's eyes went wide and her bottom jaw dropped. The kids were starting to get the picture and they were starting to worry.

"They're going to come here?" Dickie asked.

"Oh my God," Kathleen said, "Come on, Mom, let's get out of here."

"There might not be any time," Tony told them, "They're probably about here."

Kathleen and Elizabeth both let out a couple of small squeaks of horror, but they had lost their ability to talk and just clung to one another and to their mother.

"Toni," her father said, "If you had spent over 10 years in prison, and you finally broke out, what would the first thing be that you'd get?"

"A woman, a beer and a smoke, but probably not in that order," she answered.

"But what if you were looking for revenge?" he asked, "What's the first thing you'd get then?"

"A change of clothes, and a gun," she answered.

"And since there's more than one of them," he said, "We might be looking at whole damn arsenal. Probably hiding out in the bushes and as soon as anybody goes out that front door, they'll open fire."

"Kathy," Toni turned to them, "Get the kids upstairs, call the police, lock the door, and stay low to the ground, don't get by any of the windows, there might be shooting." She then started pushing everybody towards the stairs, "Move it!"

"What about you?" Kathleen asked.

"Don't worry about us, we'll be fine," Tony told them, "Get up there!"

They waited until they heard one of the doors upstairs slam shut, then they looked at each other and started to figure out what they needed to do.

"What do you think?" Toni asked.

"They've had all night to get from where the bus turned over to here, and if they _are_ out there already," Tony said, "There's no sense in hiding from them. On the other hand, if they were going to open fire on our asses they would've done it by now, so maybe they ain't here yet."

They headed over to the front window, pulled up one of the blind slats and looked outside.

"If you were going to surprise somebody, where would you be hiding out there?" Toni asked.

"I wouldn't," he answered, "I'd bust into the house…you keep an eye on this window, I'll go check around the back."

Toni stayed at the front window and looked up and down the street, seeing if anybody was coming or going. The block was eerily empty at this time of the day, no cars, no people, no traffic whatsoever.

"Everything seems clear in the back," Tony said when he returned to the living room a few minutes later.

Toni saw something, "Daddy, take a look at this."

He went over to the window and looked where she looked. Down on the corner there were two guys talking. They were turned at their sides and they were too far way to determine if they matched any of the mug shots shown on the news, but a minute later, a third guy joined in the discussion, and another one turned and pointed straight up the street at their house.

"Showtime," Tony said.

Two of the men started coming up the street from different directions, the third man slipped out of side behind a house on the other side of the block.

"Can you tell if they're carrying guns?" Toni asked.

Tony watched as the two men came closer to the house, "Yeah, they are. Come on."

She followed him around to the back door and they quietly slipped outside and watched from the side of the house. They saw one of the two men creeping up into the yard, but he didn't go up to the front door, instead he was inching his way around to the back. Tony, as quietly as he could, made his move, ambushing the man and clamping his hand over the guy's mouth so he couldn't scream, and pulling him up the driveway and out of sight.

Tony put the man in a sleeper hold that went into effect very quickly; the man fell into unconsciousness and slumped against Tony's body. He pulled the gun out of the man's pocket and gave it to Toni to hold while he decided what to do with the body. They moved up to the back porch so they couldn't be seen.

"Is there anything around here we can tie him up with?" Tony quietly asked.

"I don't think so," Toni answered, "Maybe in the house."

"Get the door."

They quickly moved back into the house with their unconscious friend, and Tony held the man's wrists while Toni looked for a rope or a cord or something to tie the man up with.

"Fine damn thing," Tony said, "Elliot's a cop and he doesn't even leave a spare set of cuffs around the house."

Toni finally pulled the straight cord out of the phone on the wall, "At least they haven't switched to _all_ cells," she commented.

She gave the cord to Tony who used it to tie the man's wrists together, tight enough the circulation would be cut off soon, definitely tight enough the man, once he woke up, wouldn't get out without plenty of time to struggle with it.

"We'll put Sleeping Beauty down in the basement," Tony told her. She went on ahead of him and opened the door and Tony carried the man down the steps and dumped him on the floor. Then they headed back upstairs and towards the back door again.

They had barely set foot outside when they saw the second man, this one had his gun drawn, making his way around to the back. Tony didn't waste any time in jumping on the guy and they struggled for the gun. It went off, but neither man appeared to be shot, but then Tony hit the man in the throat and he fell down. Toni felt her eyes open wide as she realized what her father also knew.

"He's dead."

"Good, we'll worry about that later," he said as he pulled the corpse to its feet and dragged it into the house.

Tony put the dead body down in the basement alongside the other man, and, as an afterthought, he found an old sheet down there and tossed it over the body, then joined his daughter upstairs again.

"Now what'll we do?" she asked.

Tony saw her still holding the gun in her hand. He grabbed her hand and made sure she had a tight hold on it and had her follow him out the back door again.

"The rest of his crew probably isn't far behind," Tony was starting to tell her.

"They're not," they heard.

The two Kellers turned and saw a pack of men standing in the driveway, cutting them off from the street. And the apparent leader of the pack, who stood in front of the rest of them, was none other than Christopher Sankt. Unlike most people, Sankt seemed to wear well the way his life had become since entering prison. He stood glaring at Tony with a sickening smirk on his face as he walked up to them, with a gun in his hand.

"Well, well, well," he said condescendingly, "_Detective_ Elliot Stabler, we finally meet."

"Screw you, Sankt," Tony replied, "You remember who I am."

It wasn't exactly a question, but there was something in the way Sankt looked at Tony that he wasn't making the connection just yet. A few seconds later it finally came to him, "Of course, Tony…how's the outside world been treating you?"

"Oddly enough not as well as prison's been treating you," Tony replied, "Stabler ain't here, and he ain't going to die just because your idiot brother was stupid enough to get himself killed."

The look on Sankt's face changed slightly, but he kept his overall calm and cool demeanor, and he looked past Tony and at his daughter, and he started to grin.

"Did you enjoy my brother?" he asked her, "I'm sure he enjoyed _you_."

"Quit fucking around, Sankt," Tony said, "Call off your bloodhounds, this is between you and me."

The first shot rang out before Tony finished talking. One of Sankt's men drew the first shot, but Tony wasn't hit; however the momentary distraction gave him enough time to jump Sankt and the two fell to the ground. Toni aimed the gun at one of the other skinheads and pulled the trigger, but she only grazed him. They opened fire on her but miraculously, the first few bullets to leave their guns missed her. She ducked down behind the garbage cans and kicked one out, rolling towards them. She picked up another one and threw it at them, missing one of the men and hitting two others who didn't move quickly enough. Were the situation not so serious, the whole melee could be described as comical, and comparable to one of the comic book fights in the old Batman series.

Tony grabbed Sankt's hand and snapped his fingers back, causing him to let go of the gun; which Tony skidded over towards his daughter. Then he grabbed Sankt by his shirt and got to his feet, holding Chris in front of him, daring Sankt's own men to shoot their leader. Before they could blink, Tony shoved Chris backwards and he fell against the others and they hit the ground. Tony grabbed one of the men who got up and pressed his arm into the man's windpipe. Sankt started to get up but he was met with the business end of his own gun that Toni held, and she had murder in her eyes as her index finger hugged the trigger.

* * *

Elliot and Fin had barely gotten back into New York when an alert came through on the radio in their car for all cops to report to a house in Queens because there were reports of shots fired. When the dispatcher read the address, Elliot and Fin looked at each other, they both knew that it was Elliot's house.

"Oh my God," was the first thing Elliot got out.

No further words were needed, Fin slammed on the gas and they went speeding through the streets. It only took them a few minutes to reach the block Elliot lived on, but for him, worrying about his wife and children, it was like waiting an eternity. When they got there, they saw they were last behind a convoy of police cars that had pulled up and there were officers in Kevlar vests and guns drawn all over the place. They got out of the car and Elliot stormed up to the house, forgetting about concern for his own safety; he had to find out what had happened to his family.

"Elliot!" he heard Olivia call him, but he didn't see her, not right away. She and Munch came up to him.

"What's going on?" he had to know.

"It's alright, El," Olivia put her hands up, "It's over."

"What's over?" he asked, "What the hell is going on around here?"

"Rikers was evacuated with an anthrax scare," John started to explain, "Christopher Sankt, the guy whose brother you plugged a few months back, and his flunkies, killed the guy driving the prison bus and they got out and came here to kill you for killing Bryan Sankt."

"Kathy? The kids?" Elliot was trying to talk but he wasn't able to form the sentences.

Olivia nodded her head, "They're alright, El…they were in the house, upstairs when it happened."

"Tony came back early," Munch said, "He was here with them, he and Toni had Kathy and the kids lock themselves in upstairs and call the police, and _they_ came to meet the threat."

"Where are they?" Elliot asked.

Olivia and Munch both pointed around to the backyard. Elliot saw Toni and Tony speaking to one of the officers, and they both looked out of it, Toni especially. Elliot went up to them and pulled his badge for the officer to see and asked to speak to the Kellers for a minute.

"Toni, what happened?" he demanded to know.

"It's alright, Elliot, we've got the situation under control," she tried to assure him.

"I'm gone a couple of days and what the hell goes on around here?" he asked.

"Sankt got out," Tony told him, "Came here to kill you and even the score, balance the scales for you killing his brother."

Elliot looked down at Toni and saw she was simultaneously wringing her hands and trying to hide them, and he saw why; she had black splotches and smears on her skin, gunpowder residue. He grabbed her hands and opened them up so she couldn't hide it, and he asked her, "What happened, Toni?"

"They had guns," she nodded her head over to her father, "He tossed me Sankt's, and I was holding it on him, Elliot…I had the power of life and death over that son of a bitch…in that minute, I knew what it was like to play God, I had the power to kill him right then and there…and I wanted to…I wanted so desperately to…" she squeezed her eyes shut and Elliot saw the solitary tear rolling down from the corner of her eye.

"What did you do, Toni?" he asked, trying not to lose it with her.

She shook her head and opened her eyes, "I couldn't do it, Elliot…I can't kill someone with a gun…" she pointed over to the area cutting their yard off from the next one, "I fired all six shots into that tree over there. It was the only thing _to_ do."

Elliot looked from her and over to her father and then back to her again, "I don't get it."

"Don't you get it, Elliot?" she asked, "Death is the great equalizer, but so is a gun…whoever is holding it, whoever pulls the trigger, no matter what they are, they are suddenly the highest of the high, and whoever is on the receiving end of it, they're the lowest of the low…every time, because all it takes is pulling the trigger and emptying that bullet into them…a weapon of mass destruction, and that was the key. They all had guns, they _needed_ them." She shook her head again, "_We_ didn't…we don't come from that, when we kill someone we use our bare hands. Nobody is going to fight for a gun that's empty, it forces both sides to fight the same way, it makes it fair, it makes them equal."

"Elliot!"

He turned when he heard his wife's voice and he saw Kathy and their kids coming out of the house with a policeman at their side. He ran over to Kathy and threw his arms around her.

"Thank God you're alright," he said.

"I thought we'd never see you again," Kathy told him.

Elliot let go of her and went around hugging all of his kids and seeing them individually to make sure they were alright.

"Oh God," he exhaled, "How did this happen?"

"It's alright, Dad," Kathleen told him, "Toni and her dad were here to protect us."

"Yeah, I know," he said as he glanced back over at the Kellers. He didn't know what, but there was something about them that didn't seem right.

"I'll be right back," he told his family as he sprinted back over to where Tony and his daughter were.

"Toni, what's the matter?" he asked her.

Toni put her arms around Elliot and said into his ear, "Dad killed one of Sankt's men, they were fighting for the gun and he hit him in the throat…is he going to go back to prison for that?"

Elliot kept his arms around Toni and looked over at her father as he spoke with one of the officers.

"So you took them down to the basement?" the cop asked.

"Yes, but the second one, he fell down the stairs and when I got down there to look at him," Tony explained, "He was dead."

And Elliot, while being no medical examiner, knew that there wasn't much chance of Warner proving otherwise, and if she did, he'd have to talk to her about correcting the report.

"No," he told Toni, "He's not going to go back to prison, it was an accident."

Being pressed as close against Toni as he was, he was able to actually feel the weight come off her shoulders as she let out a huge sigh of relief.

"Toni," he said, "I want to thank you."

"What on earth for?" she asked as she pulled away from him.

"You were here, you saved my family," he told her, "You saved their lives."

Toni tried to smile but she was also crying. Embarrassed, she wiped away the tears and said simply, "Hey…quid pro quo…you killed Bryan Sankt and saved my life, all I could do was repay the favor someday."

Elliot suddenly thought of a question. "What _did_ happen to Sankt?"

"Ah, that's where it's not a complete tit for tat, he's still alive," Toni pointed over to a squad car, "But, he's going to back to Rikers to a new and improved cramped little hole where he'll have no contact with anybody for the rest of his days."

Elliot looked over and saw the man sitting in the back of the police car. He had a blank look on his face, as though he didn't know what had happened.

"I hope he enjoyed himself today," Toni told Elliot, "You know? I actually feel sorry for that poor bastard; I hope he really lived up his last few hours of being out in the world, because he's never going to see any of this again."

She looked up at the afternoon sky and explained, "Never see the sun come up, never feel the breeze as the wind blows in an area not shut off by barbed wire and bars…never see the blue sky, or the birds flying, never get to walk through a public street, never again get to see all the houses and see the other folks getting to live their lives. Never going to feel the sun shining down on him again, never going to see the green of the grass and the trees, never see the colors of the flowers, never get to see the seasons change the trees from green to red and orange, never going to feel the wind hitting him as he drives along the highway at 70 miles an hour and leaves behind his past, never see the stars at night. Never going to be able to look up into that summer night sky and feel the full presence of the universe out there. And worst of all, he's never going to get out of New York again…never get to go somewhere where the sun's always shining and it never gets cold and everything stays green all year round, never get to go swimming, or drink a nice cold beer at the end of a hot day, never going to get to see the Vegas lights, never get to put a couple bucks down on a blackjack table, never get to fall in love, _never_ get to bring another him into the world, never get to go in a place and order a _good_ hamburger. Never get to go to another bar for the rest of his days, or to another ballgame, never get to go out in a storm and play chicken with a descending funnel cloud, never get to see anybody ever again. I don't know what God has in store for everybody in hell, but the way I saw it, going through life with all of these things taken away from him once and for all, is going to be a lot harder on him than a quick and for the most part painless death. I guess that's the real reason why I couldn't kill him. I spent many years pretty much dead inside, I know what it's like to lose everyone and everything you ever cared about, and it doesn't take long for it to become impossible to deal with."

"That's why you tried to kill yourself?" Elliot asked, "Because of all that?"

"And I had a knife handy," she answered, and looking at Elliot she added, "And Sankt will have his bed sheet, _if_ it occurs to him what to do, but I wasn't going to be the one to take him out of this world, or the very small world he's going to be stuck with for the rest of his life."

They took one final look at the miserable excuse for a man just as the police car drove away with him looking out the window at them. Elliot met the man's gaze and could see in his eyes just what Toni had been trying to explain, whatever life he had left when they broke out of prison, was over now.

* * *

Elliot asked for Tony and Toni to stay with he and Kathy and the kids for another night, as his way of thanking them for protecting his family. Tony took him up on the offer and Toni and the kids were thrilled at the chance to be together for another night.

Elliot went upstairs to change out of the clothes he'd been wearing for three days and to get a shower and freshen up and hope it woke him up so he felt alive again when he got out. Kathy came up a short while later to talk to him.

"You know, Kathy," he said as he got dressed, "This has been a real…eye opening experience."

"I know," Kathy told him.

"And I think it's helped me reach a decision," he added as he adjusted the strap on his wristwatch.

"Oh? What's that?" Kathy asked.

Elliot turned away from the mirror and looked her in the eyes as he answered, "I'm thinking of turning in my badge."

Kathy's eyebrows went up and the corners of her mouth went down, "What?"

"I'm going to quit Special Victims and the whole damn police department," he said, "I can't do this anymore…in the last few days, my daughter has been shot at, I've had to leave the state to go chasing the gunman, and while I'm gone, a bunch of psychos bust out of prison and nearly kill my family. And I know that we've gone over this before plenty of times…I don't see you enough, I don't spend enough time with the kids, they're growing up and I'm never here, I don't know who they are, I don't talk to you enough…I know that's got to be hard on you, and I appreciate you enduring it as much as you have…but after today I think it's just best if I do this, and I know this is what we've been talking about before…"

"Elliot," Kathy said, "I wasn't going to ask you to quit the police force, I know that it's a large part of your life."

"My family is supposed to be my life," Elliot told her.

"Elliot," Kathy grabbed him by the shirt to get his attention, "You're as good of a cop as you are _because_ you're as good of a father as you are."

"I'm not a good father," he shook his head, "I'm never here…when I am, I lose my temper too quickly with the kids, I always yell at them…"

"Because you worry about them," she said, "Like any good parent does…Elliot, if you stopped being a cop, what would you do?"

"I don't know," Elliot said, "But there's got to be a better option than this, something that I can be home more and be with you and the kids while we have the time, while we're all still here, and the kids aren't all grown up and off to college yet, and we're all still alive. I don't know, the Morris Commission wanted to take away my badge years ago, maybe they were right."

"No Elliot, they weren't," Kathy told him, "You're a good cop, you help protect people, you protect other families, other kids, by doing what you do."

"But at what cost, Kathy? What cost?" Elliot wanted to know.

* * *

Tony and Toni made a run to a liquor store and came back with bottles of champagne to have over dinner for a celebration of Elliot's safe return and his family's wellbeing while he was away. They filled up the champagne glasses and Toni stood up and went over beside Elliot and raised her glass. "I propose a toast, to _Detective_ Elliot Stabler, for being one of the best damn cops this whole damn state has ever had the honor of being graced by his presence."

Tony and Kathy raised their glasses in agreement, and Elliot just laughed and covered his face with his hands as he tried to think of what to say.

"Toni, I'm flattered," he started to say, "But…"

He looked at her, and looked at his kids, and then over at Kathy and Tony who were waiting to see what it was he had to say. He saw the look in Kathy's eyes and knew this wasn't the time to bring it up. He could tell them tomorrow of his decision to quit SVU, and who knew? Maybe tomorrow he'd have a valid reason to change his mind back to staying a cop. For now, he just wanted to take comfort in the fact that he and his family were all alive and safe and well and together, and that feeling extended to Toni and her father as well.

"Oh well," he said as he picked up his glass too, "Who am I to go against popular opinion?"

They clinked their glasses together and drank. Later into the night, as everybody was wearing down and getting ready for bed, Elliot dragged out an air mattress he and Kathy used when they took the kids camping and blew it up for the Kellers to use for the night, suggesting it would be a bit more comfortable than the living room floor.

"You forget who you're talking to, Elliot," Toni told him, "We can sleep anywhere," and she slapped her father on the back and added, "You ever see a guy who can fall asleep on a kitchen counter?"

"Well I try to be a good host," he explained, "Hey Tony, I want to thank you for what you did."

Tony tried to wave it off but Elliot wouldn't let him, "I don't know what happened that you decided to come back early, and come here…but I'm glad you did, I hate to think what would've happened if you guys hadn't been here."

"But we were," Tony told him, "It's fate, Elliot, you can't fight it…life has a funny way of putting the right people together at just the right moment at the damnedest times. You can't explain it any other way than just God putting you where He wants you, so don't try and question it."

"You really think so?" Elliot asked.

"Hey, He brought you into the prison to see me, didn't He?" Tony asked, "And look where that's gotten us…it's a bad omen to question the why or the how of things like that, just be thankful they happen."

"No kidding," Elliot soberly replied.

He took a step away from Tony and hugged Toni again and told her, "I'm sorry you guys had to get mixed up in this again."

"Who else?" Toni asked lightly.

"So…is this the last we're going to see of you guys for another year?" Elliot asked, "Is this the last grand appearance of the Kellers in New York?"

"I don't know, Elliot," she said, "This place is like having a bedspring sticking out of your pants, it eventually latches onto something and always pulls you back to the same place." She looked back to her father and added, "Maybe we'll stick around for a while…definitely through the summer season."

"Yeah? Think you'll ever consider moving to Queens?" Elliot asked.

"Don't know," Toni answered as she pulled away from Elliot, "I guess that'll just depend on where the wind blows us eventually. Elliot…Jack McCoy said he thinks I could be a good lawyer someday?"

"That's what he said," Elliot told her.

"What about you?" Toni asked, "Do you think I'd be a good cop?"

Elliot stopped and looked at her, "Are you serious?"

"Probably not, but do you think I _could_ be?" she asked.

He thought about it for a minute and said, "Yeah, I think you'd be a good cop, someday."

Toni had a goofy smile on her face and she was bringing her bottom row of teeth up to bite her top lip, "Well, with my record they probably wouldn't take me…but I was just thinking, imagine if I did, and one day I transferred to SVU, then I'd be working alongside you and Olivia and Munch and all the others."

Tony laughed and said, "That'd probably knock ol' Baldy right off the wagon and onto a case of grain alcohol."

"It would really mean a lot to you, wouldn't it?" Elliot asked.

Toni nodded, "We can kid ourselves all we want, but you're the reason I'm still alive, Elliot, you were the only cop I ever liked."

Elliot looked at her and then over at her father, and then back at Toni again and he said, "It's late, you two should get to bed."

"More like you and Kathy should," Toni told him, "Goodnight, Elliot."

"Goodnight."

* * *

Elliot sprang up in bed and felt his breath stuck in his throat. Only a dream he told himself as he looked around the pitch dark room, and tried to lie back down and go back to sleep, but with no success. For a couple of minutes he just lay there and tried to sleep, but it didn't work. So finally he pushed back the covers and got up.

"Elliot?" the movement woke Kathy up momentarily.

"I can't sleep," he said, "I'm going to go check on the kids and make sure they're alright, you go back to bed."

He put on his robe and left the room and checked on the kids one by one; first Dickie, then Elizabeth, then Kathleen, all of whom were asleep and without a care in the world, for which he was very grateful. Maybe Toni was right about them being particularly resilient at their ages.

That made Elliot think, and quietly he went over to the stairs and headed down to check in on his houseguests. The lights had been left on in the dining room and the living room, and Toni and Tony were each sprawled out on the opposite sides of the air mattress, surrounded by pillows, blankets and cushions from the couch. They were also each asleep and for the moment anyway, seeming to be without a care in the world.

They had all certainly come a long way over the last couple of years, Elliot thought as he looked in on them. Who would have ever thought that one of his first victims would ever come back into his life asking for help? And who would've ever thought she and her father who had been serving life for three murders, would come around and in turn help him by saving the lives of his wife and three kids? Life certainly seemed to have an unusual sense of humor, he thought.

Elliot turned and saw his badge lying on the table, and it made him think. Over the years he had worked a lot of cases and tried to help a lot of people. They always offered help to their victims, helping them get into therapy and rehab and support groups and shelters when needed…they always offered, but not everybody took them up on their offers, and of the ones who did, he wasn't sure how many of them ever really got the help they needed to get their lives together and move on. And then he looked back in at this whole who had been victimized her whole life, even by the people who were supposed to help her, and she did not see herself as a victim. She didn't act like a victim. Most of the ones they saw at SVU were mad at the whole world for what happened to them, and many of them were incapable of ever moving past that, but not Toni. Somehow she seemed to have made peace with what happened to her; not at all what he expected when he first saw her all those years ago.

It made him wonder…how many other kids had he seen since Toni who were like her, and he had forgotten? And adults, how many of them had he seen who were like this? Not a lot, or maybe he just couldn't remember them anymore. People like Toni seemed to be a rare breed but were they really? And how many more people like her _would_ he encounter? _Would_, that implied he _would_ stay on at SVU. Looking in at Toni, he remembered her words earlier. 'You were the only cop I ever liked'. And he remembered how many other officers and therapists and social workers had tried to get through to her, and all had failed but for some reason she came back to him when she needed help. Why? How? What had he done that it affected her that way? Whatever it was, maybe he hadn't lost that touch yet…maybe he could still get through to some of the victims, God knew they needed all the help they could get.

"Sleep well you two," he quietly remarked before turning around and going back upstairs for the night. As he climbed the stairs he remembered what Tony had said earlier, about God putting people where He wanted them to be…maybe that was why he'd already stayed on at SVU for so long when most only stayed two years. Maybe his work wasn't done yet. Maybe…maybe…he'd sleep on it and think about it again in the morning, after spending the night asleep in his own bed in his own home, with his loving wife beside him…his wife who was suddenly so supportive of him staying in SVU. Yes…maybe there _was_ some grand scheme of explanation for everything that happened after all, and maybe him staying an SVU detective played into all of that somehow. He looked down at the badge he didn't remember picking up, and saw its number: 6313, _his_ number. No, he decided, his days of wearing this weren't over yet, his time wasn't up yet.


End file.
